


Scott's Life is Hard

by yellow_caballero



Series: Scott's Life is Hard [1]
Category: X-Men, X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men Evolution
Genre: Cyclops Was Right, Cyclops did nothing wrong, Gen, High School AU, Magneto did nothing wrong, Rachel and Cable: Mystery twins, Scott Summers is not a dick, Scott is tired, Team as Family, The Avengers suck and Tony Stark's an asshole, The Dark Phoenix Saga, Time Travel, Xavier is kind of the worst, buildingsroman, does that count if Evolution is one big high school AU, domestic AU, i swear to god this isn't as cute as it sounds, if someone's out of character you're probably right
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2018-10-24 02:49:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10732590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellow_caballero/pseuds/yellow_caballero
Summary: Scott cares a lot less about leading the X-Men then he does about getting the kids to school on time. Wrangling a mansion full of teenagers is the work of a lifetime, but Scott's not going anywhere. Sometimes love has to be enough. And somehow Scott's father of the year.In which bees are a novelty to ex-brainwashed apocalypse assasins, rotating groups of teenagers makes breakfast increasingly complicated, Magneto reads the daily newspaper, and Scott is the supreme god king dictator of 20 frightened mutant teenagers.





	1. Three Months After

Scott had been left in charge. 

The Professor was out on some vague errand or another, which for him could mean anything from visiting an old college friend to infiltrating a secret anti-mutant government agency taskforce. Upon more than one occasion the old college friend had been the leader of the secret government task force and Scott had been called in so he could drug the old college friend’s tea, which Scott tried his hardest to feel slightly uncomfortable with but couldn’t really muster up the energy at this point. Ororo was speaking at a hobbyist botanist convention. Scott really had no idea where Logan was, and very pointedly did not want to know. So, he was in charge. 

Of course, Jean was co-in charge since she was co-leader, but the first and only time Scott had suggested she be the one to take responsibility for getting the kids up for school she had pretty much laughed in his face. She had delegated herself responsible for checking his ‘mad excesses of power’, whatever  _ that  _ was supposed to mean, and left the rest of up to him. That was alright. Whenever Jean wasn’t around Scott tended to make worse battle decisions than normal, but she had very little interest in the actual decision making process. 

Instead, Scott kept to the schedule. 

Wake up at six, get dressed, boot up the Danger Room. Walk back to the bedroom wing and knock, in as annoying a way as possible, on Kurt, Rogue, Tabby, Ray, and Sam’s doors. Share a good morning kiss with Jean and knock on Rogue’s door again, since she was definitely up until 2 am on those weird internet forums again. Get bitched at for ten minutes until everybody shuffles into the Danger Room and then turn it on, at which point they are no longer asleep but definitely still bitching. Turn off the Danger Room at seven, let Jean and Amara go ten minutes early to set up breakfast, and try to corral everybody into cleaning up after themselves and not playing with their food or throwing any of it at Bobby. Jamie wanted to wear his X-Men uniform to school today so Scott has to talk him out of that, and Kitty’s hogging the bathroom again and not letting Rogue do her makeup. Bobby’s pretending he’s sick even though he froze Ray to the ground just fine in the Danger Room that day and some other girls in school are being mean to Amara so she doesn’t want to go either. Scott is a little uncertain if he’s supposed to beat up any fourteen year olds, but Tabby already called beating up privileges so it probably isn’t his problem. 

Scott squinted at Jamie a little bit more over his coffee. He’s still sulking about not being allowed to wear his uniform to class, but he’s looking oddly...shifty. Only shoving three muffins into his mouth at once instead of five, not asking Amara to heat up his hot chocolate, that kind of thing. Scott quietly leaned over and tapped Jean, who is primly buttering a piece of toast, and jerked his thumb at Jamie. Jean furrowed her brow at Jamie, before quickly snickering and nodding her head. Scott only sighed and got up from the table. 

“Okay, time to go. Everybody get your stuff and get into the car. I’ll be back in a minute. Kurt, do not shove that muffin into your pocket, that gets crumbs everywhere. ” 

Then Scott walked up the stairs and down the hallway to the bedrooms, and knocked on Jamie’s door, wiggling the knob. Locked, of course. 

“Jamie, I know you’re in here. Open up.” 

Muffled sounds of resistance from inside the room. 

“Jamie, you know I have the key to your room.” 

More panicked sounds of resistance from inside, including a small thump and banging sounds. When Jamie finally opens the door he’s scowling, but silently steps aside to let Scott into the room. There’s a Jamie at the computer desk playing with a baseball and looking sullen, a distressed Jamie sitting at the foot of Jamie’s bed and anxiously looking at his watch, and a Jamie curled up into a ball in the bed with his covers pulled tight over his head. 

Every Jamie save the invisible one snaps his head upright in unison, staring eerily at Scott. The other Jamie on the bed looks tearful, the one at the door looks peeved off (probably that his sole purpose for existence was to open the door so the others wouldn’t have to get up), and the one at the desk looks fairly bored. Then they disappear in three twin bangs, and only the Jamie on the bed is left. 

Scott sits down gingerly at the end of the bed, wondering if the breakfast table dupe had been dispelled also. He would have to assign some exercises later on to Rahne about vigilance and habitually sniffing your teammates or something, seeing as she had mentioned once or twice that the dupes smelled slightly different than Jamie. Usually it was Logan’s style to turn anything and everything into a training session, but it would be handy for when they ran into Mystique again - 

“I don’t wanna go to school!” Jamie wailed. “I hate it there!” 

Scott bit down a sigh. “Can you come out of the sheet, kiddo?” 

The sheet lump lumbered upwards, the Spider-Man cover slipping away to reveal a red-rimmed and sniffling Jamie. Uh oh. Scott quickly telegraphed a thought to Jean -  _ Jamie’s real upset. If I’m not down by 8 go ahead and take the van -  _ and refocused his attention on the kid. “Rough night, huh?” 

It happened. Granted, it mostly happened to Rogue, but ever since that incident with the Sentinels everybody had nightmares every so often. Most often it was the job of the roommate and Jean to take care of it, but if there was crying involved Scott was usually called in. The new batch of kids were homesick often, and often they manifested anxiety about the flying metal death traps who wanted to kill them for the sheer accident of their birth through crying about how they just wanted to go home. But that, at least, was something Scott could handle. 

Jamie sniffed. “I don’t have to go to school and you can’t make me. And Mister Logan isn’t here so you can’t make him make me, so  _ there. _ ” 

“You know that if we don’t all go to school as often as possible CPS starts poking around the mansion,” Scott said wearily. He couldn’t count the number of times he had said that sentence throughout his life, which honestly was a little sad. “And needless to say that’d be bad. Besides, don’t you need to graduate from middle school to become a private eye?” 

Becoming a famous mutant private eye was the current life dream, in comparison with the desire to become a government agent the week before and the deep-seated need to be a super-spy like Nick Fury the week before that. “So I’ll send a dupe. Nobody has to know and I get all his memories anyway, so I’m not actually missing school.” 

“Last time you tried making your dupes do all your chores they revolted.” 

“We have an agreement this time,” Jamie said dangerously. “And it’s not fair. Middle school is a waste of time. It’s not like I’ll ever be able to have a normal job  _ anyway _ . It’s not like I’ll ever get to high school before - before we have to go on the run or something.” 

“Go on the run?” Scott quirked an eyebrow. “Why would we have to do that?” 

Jamie shrugged, still scowling darkly. 

“Jamie. What’s the real reason you don’t want to go to school? You can tell me, c’mon.” 

“I hate school.” 

“You like learning,” Scott pointed out reasonably. “You like finding out stuff like a real private eye does. Your grades are great. So you don’t want to go because of the other kids, huh?” 

“I hate them!” Jamie spat, eyes alight. Scott winced slightly - right on the marker, then. “Ricky and Telly keep on making fun of me and shoving me to make my dupes show up, and I don’t have any friends and Ian kept on telling everybody that muties could kill you if you touched them so now nobody talks to me and they all throw things! And it’s not like with everyone else, because at least they get to hang out together at school. I’m the only one in the whole school who’s a mutant, and they all know it. I hate, hate, hate it and I’m not going anymore. And private eyes don’t need high school degrees, I checked.” 

So what could Scott say? He was right. People said the same things about mutants at the high school, only everybody had known them before the whole mutant thing got out in the open and some of their friends had stuck around. And they had each other. Middle school was hard enough when you were the orphaned new kid without adding in mutant powers and near-death situations every couple of weeks. 

“I miss the farm. I didn’t have any friends there either, but at least nobody made fun of me.” He looked up dolefully at Scott, eyes silently accusing. “And now you’re gonna tell me that I’m not allowed to hate everybody and I have to be like Jesus all the time and if I’m nice enough everybody’ll come around too.”

“No, I’m pretty sure hatred is mandatory here.” Scott leaned back on the bed, grinning slightly at Jamie. “And it sounds like Ricky and Telly aren’t going to come around anytime soon. But there seems to be a lot of other kids in your grade, and I’m willing to bet a couple of them haven’t made up their minds yet about you. Which Jamie Madrox do you want to show them? A nice one or a mean one? The real Jamie or a dupe Jamie?” 

“...the real one.” 

“Sounds like. And sounds like the Jamie I know doesn’t run away from the hard things. This is a hard thing, and I’m not going to pretend it’s not. But I know you do hard things every day - like when you saved Sam from the laser in the Danger Room last week.” 

Jamie gave him a wobbily smile, sniffling slightly. “Aw, it wasn’t that great.” 

“Are you kidding? It was awesome, the whole team thought so. Everybody in this house thinks the world of you. As your team leader, I’m not allowed to lie. Logan eats me if I do.” 

“Mister Logan doesn’t eat people for lying!” Jamie giggled. “Mister Logan said he only eats you if you walk into an unsecured building during a firefight.” 

“Oh, my mistake. Now up and at ‘em - you’re gonna be late for school.” 

Scott, contrary to popular belief, grew up in the foster care system. He had given this speech more times than he could count, in one way or another. He had been in eight homes, discounting Mrs. Leary because he was only with her for about two weeks and she was just terrible, and in every single one he had been the oldest in the house. In the vast majority there were at least three other kids in the house, most of them foster kids themselves. Foster kids were a lot to handle, even for a very attentive foster parent, which wasn’t always a guarantee. And Scott, well, he was such a  _ good  _ kid - he could be trusted to babysit, right? For a couple weeks? Thanks, Scott! 

Thanks, Scott. Professor Xavier wasn’t his longest placement, and seeing as Scott only had nine more months before he turned 18 it never would be. It was probably the weirdest. Had, on average, more life or death situations than the other ones did, though not always by as wide a margin as you might think. Definitely his favorite. 

Scott packed Jamie away with the efficiency of long years of practice in the convertible, as Jean had already taken the SUV to the high school already, and waved him off. Then he drove to the high school, because CPS sniffed around if you stopped going to school, and drew up the new Danger Room plans for the next week in history. He dodged a thrown pencil case at his head in english and wrote down individual education plans for each of the kids. He paid attention in physics, cursing when he realized why his optic blasts ricocheted wrong last time he got into a fight with Lance. He paid attention in PreCal too, since it was necessary for physics. 

He joined the others for lunch, idly trying to remember what his mother looked like, before he saw Jean waving to him from their usual spot and quickly resumed thinking about the Danger Room performances that day. Jean laughed. 

“If only you could worry as much about school as the Danger Room!” 

Kurt was trying to balance as many textbooks as possible on his head while Roberto and Kitty egged him on. He was up to three. Bobby, Sam, and Ray were apparently still arguing about the exact same thing they had been arguing about at breakfast. Rahne was absent - club meeting, Scott remembered - and Jubilee was studying frantically for an art test the next period. Tabby was copying off Amara’s homework. Somebody passed by their table, loudly talking about how they had heard that all mutants were sociopaths. Rogue was asleep. 

Scott poked Rogue with a pencil, eliciting a bleary glare and the finger. “I told you to go to sleep earlier last night.” 

“Ya, and ya ain’t my Ma. Go screw.” 

Scott jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the lunch table several feet away from them, where the Brotherhood was eating. Their particular corner of the cafeteria had, on more than one occasion, been referred to as the ‘Mutant Ghetto’ - it was the only location where either group were socially allowed to sit. The downside was that the two groups had to sit only two tables away, and the Toad was catching flies with his tongue again. “Please, feel free to leave if you want. I’m not stopping you.” 

“Quick, put this sandwich on his head! This is so wild!” Kitty cheered. “Kurt, you have the balance of, like, a princess!” 

“Heather Yung transferred out of school last week,” Jean said quietly next to him. “Angelica saw her drop off her papers today.” 

Jean was the only one other people still talked to. Scott half-suspected that her powers had something to do with her highly damaged but still intact popularity, but he had never called her out on it. “Let me guess,” Scott said, “Her mother just doesn’t feel like her school is safe anymore?” 

Jean’s mouth twitched. “Got it in one.” 

“More room for us, I guess.” 

“Good viewpoint. That’s the kind of optimism we all look to in our leaders.” 

“Well, and the fact that it’s one less person I need to worry about us accidentally murdering. Or murdering us. Or trashing our lockers again.” 

“See? Optimism.” 

There had been a PTA meeting called about them a month ago. Of course, it wasn’t explicitly about them, but Scott was on the PTA mailing list and could very well translate what ‘increasing terrorist dangers to the school’ meant. Scott and Ororo had been the ones who ended up attending, and the less said about the accusations on Kurt, Rahne, and Amara’s visas, Tabby’s rap sheet, how much Kurt’s sheer existence was deeply upsetting to just about everyone, and even the vague racism, the better. 

Scott had wanted to scream. These people didn’t know the X-Men. They had never been to Kitty’s hackathons like he had, had never attended Ray’s garage band gigs. They never had to ground Sam because they found a joint in his room, had never comforted a crying Jamie because the other kids just wouldn’t leave him alone and had been totally helpless while doing so. They had never heard a bad joke by Kurt, seen Rogue smile. 

Joke was on them, though. The PTA had hand delivered the protest against the enrollment of Professor Xavier’s students to Principal Darkholme, who thanked the PTA graciously for the memo and had promptly called the Professor to do a dramatic reading before cackling and ripping it up into pieces. She may have paid more attention to it if public school principals were able to kick kids out for no reason, or at least if they had been less inflammatory of her children. And Professor Xavier, fabulously wealthy and fabulously telepathic as he was, was a hard man to intimidate. 

At best guess seven students had been suddenly and mysteriously transferred to private school. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as Logan would say, except with more fake cursing. 

Kurt was up to seven textbooks, a pencil case, Scott’s notebook of training plans, and a sandwich balanced on his head. Scott pinched the bridge of his nose as best he could without dislodging his glasses. “Kurt. Put the textbooks down, you’re drawing attention to yourself.” 

“Aww, what’s the harm, C-Man? Not like I have to hide I’m a mutant, right?” Kurt grinned, completely ignorant of the fizzing and sparking of his hologram watch, and let Roberto put another Cheez-it on his head. 

“You can get kicked out for being a disturbance. Your hologram is fizzing, by the way.” 

Kurt, Kitty, and Roberto guiltily began removing the textbooks. 

“You’re never any fun.” Kitty sulked. “You’re being, like, super bossy today.” 

“Never heard that one before.”

“You guys know how we all have this little voice in our head that tells us, like, not to eat that fifth piece of pizza?” Bobby wondered out loud. “Or not to pull that totally sick flip on the skateboard? That little voice is kind of starting to sound like Scott.”

Jean giggled, while the entire table laughed and agreed. Scott let a smile twitch. “Just you guys watch out. Jean and I will graduate soon and then we’ll have nothing better to do all day than nag you.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Jean said primly. “I’m actually going to college. It’s Scott who’s the housewife.” 

The table laughed again. 

It was true. Scott, in the way of true hypocrites everywhere, was a perfectly mediocre student, and he was a perfectly mediocre student because Jamie was completely and totally right that morning and one way or another he really had better things to worry about, whether it was his unstable home life or his unstable optic blasts. Jean wanted to go to NYU, thought she could be an X-Man part time. Scott had never in his life expected to go to college and was not expecting it now. 

They had talked about it, even fought about it. A long distance thing wasn’t too hard when your girlfriend was a telepath and learning how to fly. They could make it work. Scott was a simple guy. He wasn’t sure, but he felt as if his Dad has been something blue collar. All of his foster parents had been blue collar. And being able to go with Logan and Ororo on their real, important missions, and give all of his time to the cause...it was probably moving up. 

Jean still visited her parents every Christmas. She didn’t get it. If she was lucky, she never would. 

Scott had the rest of the day in off periods where Jean had several AP classes. Most of the time he stayed in the library, reading or working on homework until the middle school let out and he could go to pick up Jamie and letting Jean take the SUV and the rest of the kids home.  Of course, there was Jean and Roberto’s soccer practice, Tabby’s detentions, Amara and Jean’s NHS meetings and Kitty’s late night robotics meetings, but that was usually what Kurt was good for. It was almost impossible to get any work actually done at home, so this was usually a good time to make sure his grades remained mediocre and not failing, as well as doing the extra work Professor Xavier assigned him. 

He called Logan instead. 

The phone rang about ten times, and when it was finally picked up the reception was heavy with static and thumping, punctuated by the occasional scream. 

“Uh, hello?” 

“Who is this.” The voice on the other end sounded just like Logan, but disturbingly pubescent and slightly female. 

“Oh, Laura. Hey. How is it...uh, going?” 

She grunted. A man screamed distantly on the other end. 

“That’s...good. Road trip with your dad going okay?” 

Another grunt. 

“Well, so long as you’re having a good time.” 

Grunt. 

“Can you pass me over to Logan now? If he’s not too busy. I can call back.” 

He was passed over to Logan, probably. There was a lot of shuffling and static and some louder grunting, but then the grunting got quieter and Scott was rewarded with a muffled, “Yello.” 

“Logan, hi. This isn’t a bad time, is it?” 

“Not really. Izzit an emergency?” 

“Every day’s an emergency in this house, but no, not any more than usual.” 

Logan grunted, and there was a rush of static that either indicated that he was switching ears with the phone or that somebody had gotten stabbed. Probably both. “Okay, kid, hit me.” 

It blindsided him every time, but Scott felt a rush of relief and gratitude for Logan. All of the kids looked up to him and respected him, in the way that you can only respect a fully adult man who has a kill count in the triple digits. Scott was the one who got them to and from school and got them to eat their vegetables, but Logan was the one who could deal with one of the daily immense personal crises by wandering in, saying something vague yet inspiring, and then wandering away. For the more intense days he could usually just have one of the kids come with him on a Hydra or Weapon X busting mission and solve their problems through violence and some kind of contrived moral. It always worked. Storm was useful in this way too, only whenever there was some kind of emotional breakdown she would quietly put them in the greenhouse and have them talk to her about their feelings as she watered the plants. Scott quietly suspected she just hid some earbuds under her hair whenever this happened, but if it worked it worked. 

Scott updated Logan on his day while Hydra agents screamed in the background, moving on to his worries about college and the leak was that developing in one of the pipes. 

“I’m not gonna be back for a while, kid. Laura’s not really ready to come back, if you get what I mean.” 

Scott grunted, still frustered. “Yeah, I know. It’s just - the Professor’s been gone a while by now, you know?”

He was pretty sure that was screaming in the background. “Yeah, so?”

“Well, I’m seventeen, and I can’t reasonably be expected to be the head of house for thirteen people. You know how hard it is being the only one do does the grocery shopping and makes everyone clean up after themselves? Or trips to the bank? Or calibrates the gigantic three story room filled entirely with a supercomputer that can stalk every genome on earth in a really creepy way?”

“Banks are overrated. All of my money’s in gold buried on the banks of the Potomac.”

Of course it was. “I’m - I’m just one kid, Logan. I don’t know why this is even my job.”

Laura’s guttural yell echoed through the speakers, screaming promises of bloodthirst and a slow and agonizing death. “Well, is anyone else volunteering?”

“What?”

Someone was chanting death over the speakers, but Logan just sounded impatient. “Is anyone else going to do it? I’m not there. Good luck getting Ororo in one place for a week straight, much less keep something alive that isn’t a plant. Hank’s at a conference in California. You’re supposed to be a leader, Scott. Act like it.”

“I agreed to lead the X-Men, not act as den mother.”

“Well, suck it up. At least you’re not covered in blood like I am. That’s why we go to college, Laura. Laura! Laura, for God’s -” There was a large rush of crackling, and after a second Logan’s voice echoed through the phone. “Gotta go, Laura’s found a nazi again.”

He hung up. 

Scott stared at the phone. He was too old to ask ‘why me?’. He was too smart to ask why it was so unfair. It was never fair. Scott’s life had never been fair. He was happy, really happy, but he couldn’t open his eyes without his dorky glasses for fear of shooting laser beams everywhere and his parents hadn’t stopped being dead anytime soon. 

He slid the phone into his back pocket, already taking a deep breath and shoving aside his homework binder for a danger room schedule. Nobody needed to know. He couldn’t let anyone know he didn’t want to do this. It was time to really be an adult now. Adults can handle things kids can’t, can hold responsibility for their lives and the lives of everyone else they needed to. Scott was an adult. As of last week, when Scott had been left in charge, he had become an adult. He had to keep on telling himself that.

Maybe someday he would believe it.


	2. Four Years After

_ i.  _

 

Magneto was still here. 

He hadn’t left. He hadn’t gone evil, been brainwashed, tried to infiltrate the mansion, attempted to assassinate Professor Xavier, or refused to do the dishes. He hadn’t tried to raise any world destroying mutants from the dead (purposefully) and he hadn’t organized any teen mutant gangs that Scott didn’t already know about. His body count, even during his incredibly frequent holy crusades against the unworthy, was nil. The only things Magneto regularly did, in fact, involved either telekinetically throwing large sheets of metal at grudgingly consenting high schoolers or teaching Hebrew School at the local Jewish community center. In short, he had become boring - worse still, he had become an X-Man. 

“Seeing as that exclusive group is largely made out of co-eds,” Erik said over breakfast, because you can’t call somebody Magneto over breakfast, “forgive me if I’m not impressed.” 

Scott scowled over his eggs benedict. Not at the eggs benedict, of course, since it was delicious. Sending a Jamie off to culinary school in France for a year had been an excellent idea. “Seeing as it was those  _ high schoolers  _ who managed to curtail your reign of terror - “

“Reign of terror is such a strong word,” Erik intoned. 

“Tell that to Trask Corp!” 

“They were insured.” 

“They filed you as an Act of God!”

Magneto’s mouth twitched into a half-smile. “How appropriate.” 

Hisako’s arm stretched between the deadlocked eyes of the two men for the ketchup bottle. She rolled her eyes professionally, carelessly scraping the bottle on Erik’s omelet and sending flecks of egg everywhere. “Honestly, Scott, save the grudges for after breakfast.” 

Jean Paul gurgled through his Cap’n Crunch, which is what happened when you tried to snicker with your mouth full. “Have you met Scott? He’d have a grudge on the Danger Room door lasers.” 

“You’ve never been locked in there,” Scott said darkly. “And if you don’t finish your cereal you’re about to find out.” 

Jean Paul gulped down his cereal while Hisako giggled, before hastily gulping down her own french toast. Scott glanced over at Dani, who had been ignoring the familiar spat between Scott and Erik for favor of a whispered conversation with Xi’an, punctuated occasionally with giggles. Somebody was missing - 

Scott tilted back in his chair to look at the Jamie dupe in the kitchen, who was occupied morosely whisking eggs for french toast. “Jamie, where’s Jamie?” 

The dupe scoffed, waving a spatula. “Jamie this, Jamie that, it’s all about Jamie, huh? Nobody ever cares about the dupe. I’m just here to make your breakfast, slaving away at a hot stove day after day because a certain someone just needs french toast in the morning. What about my feelings? Does anybody care about the working man’s plight?” 

Dani rolled her eyes, but Xi’an just giggled behind her hand. “Sounds like this one should be a dupe of Jean instead.” 

“That hurts, but it’s fair,” Jean Paul admitted. “Where is dear leader, anyway? He’s usually the first one up in the mornings. Always something about making battle plans.” The teenager shuddered theatrically. “So many whiteboards…”

Erik pursed his lips at the paper. “The Senate has a new mutant bill on the floor next month.” 

Scott opened his mouth to bite out a stern shut-down of the idea before he remembered who he was talking to. He sighed instead, which was usually just as effective on anybody save Bobby and The Master of Magnetism. Bobby was incorrigible. “Don’t kill anyone, it’s a bad example for the kids.” 

“Honestly. Who do you take me for.” 

“Uh,  _ you _ ?” Scott leaned back in his chair again, pitching his voice as loud as he could. “Jamie! Breakfast!” 

Jamie Madrox was his own personal herd of elephants. His sparking and clumsy energy as a preteen had been sublimated into the form of a tall, muscular young man whose grace was hard fought through five years in the Danger Room. Scott heard his cry for joy as he slid down the banister before he saw him, and he heard the tell-tale thump and scuff of patent leather boots before he skidded into the kitchen. 

“Sorry, sorry, lost track of time.” He accepted a fresh plate of food from his dupe, who was still scowling but had known exactly the minute Jamie would walk through. “What’s up, dude. How’s breakfast going?” 

“I’m being oppressed.” 

“I’ll put you on essay duty next time,” Jamie said gravely. He bent down to hug Scott, who tried to avoid sliding toast. “You did great on the Danger Room today, X-Force. Except for you, Jean Paul. You suck.” 

Jean Paul, who at sixteen was the closest in age to Jamie even if he had less than a fifth of his experience, scowled good naturedly. “I wouldn’t have messed up that dive if Dani hadn’t gotten me stuck in her blindspot illusion.” 

“And you and Dani should have co-ordinated. Now you know. Hi, Erik. Who’s on the terrorist list for today?” 

“Oh, you know,” Erik said vaguely, snapping his newspaper. “Sinners.” 

“Well, so long as they deserve it,” Jamie said cheerfully. “Scott, Jubes and Rahne phoned last night and told me to tell you that they won’t be home from the mission for at least another week.” 

Xi’an perked. “Jubillee is coming home? Here? Now?” 

“Aw, Karma’s got a crush - “ 

“Shut up Jean!” 

“Who wouldn’t have a crush on Jubes,” Dani said reasonably, probably thinking she was coming to Xi’an’s aid. “She’s awesome.”

“I don’t even,” Xi’an sputtered, “I live with her! That’s so creepy!” 

Erik and Jamie slanted a knowing look at Scott, who occupied himself quickly with his toast and on dispelling the new quickly rising argument. “Erik decides their training schedule, so Erik is in charge of organizing the training sessions.” Scott mentally wished him luck, as co-ordinating five different college schedules and three fervent partiers was becoming increasingly difficult. Of course, all of the kids firmly believed that New Mutant buisness would always take precedent over school any day of the week and especially in world-ending cases, but Scott and Erik were firm. Any emergency could be handled by the X-Men, who were the nominal adults of the group and so had it as their actual job, and anything less than an emergency was temporary. An education was forever. “If anyone’s allowed to chew them out for not coming home soon enough it’s him.” 

“You know,” Dani said, chewing on a fork with her chin propped up on one fist, “other kids are allowed to live in dorms.” 

“Other kids aren’t on a superhero team that need training at least three days a week. Trust me, I had to argue him down from five.” Scott said, while Erik shrugged. “Or flood the first floor of their dorm freshman year.”

“Bobby ruins everything,” said Hisako. There was a chorus of nods from around the table, even from Jamie. 

“Now, now,” Scott said, “No making fun of your siblings. Even if they are Bobby.” 

“Jean Paul?” 

“You can make fun of Jean Paul.” 

“Ray?” 

“Definitely Ray.” 

The table cheered. 

Scott watched the table split into sleepy panic, scavenging for lost textbooks and backpacks, brushing teeth and yelling through doors. Jamie, split into three, was always the first one at the door, while Dani was chronically forgetful and always had to climb up three flights of stairs to retrieve a lost piece of homework. He accepted his requisite hugs before marshalling all of them out the door, waving goodbye as Jamie accepted his chauffeur duty as the oldest with a stiff upper lip and shoved every member of his team inside. 

Erik watched him with a mug of coffee in one and a quirked eyebrow, smiling slightly as Scott caught the look on his face and scowled. “What now?” 

“Nothing. You’re very good with them.” 

Scott dropped the scowl, somewhat mollified. “It was harder when they were younger. Jean-Paul used to start fights with Dani just so he wouldn’t have to go out the door, and I don’t have to drop Hisako off at the middle school anymore.” He lowered himself into a chair, stealing the news section of Erik’s newspaper and laying it flat on the table. 

“Don’t be modest. You’re the same way with the New Mutants.” 

Fluff pieces, natural disasters, celebrities. Tony Stark donated another million to charity. Hadn’t Erik punched Tony Stark one time? The thought was oddly heartwarming. “They were a thousand times worse than this lot, believe me. Sam, Bobby, Roberto, and Ray used to just feed off each other.” 

“Roberto…isn’t he with Alpha Flight now?” 

Scott hummed in agreement. “Said he needed his space. Also, I think you skeeve him out.” 

“I have no idea how you did it.” Erik leaned forward slightly in his chair, rubbing at his eyebrow. Coming from Erik, that was a full on wailing and gnashing of teeth. “It’s like herding cats. I feel like I’m constantly split in six ways at once.” 

“Try fifteen, see how well that works out for you. Have two of them be Rogue and Kurt, see how that one goes.” The newspaper, tellingly, said very much about the Avenger’s newest press conference but very little about the anti-mutant riots in Alabama. Scott didn’t really know he felt about that one - was no press better than bad press? He didn’t know if he preferred erasure over vitriol. At this point he didn’t feel like what he had a preference towards really mattered. Undisputed leader of the world’s strongest mutant alliance and he couldn’t so much as get people to care. Some leader. 

24 and already too old for this. Scott shook his head. Wonder what that says about Captain America. 

He began folding up the newspaper, already depressed. “Honestly, it’s different with the New Mutants than with the X-Men. I had classes with the X-Men, and went to school with them for far longer. When we learned how to navigate this bizarre world Professor X dropped us into, it was together. With the New Mutants, it must have seemed like I had things all figured out from the beginning.” He laughed a little, remembering more than one embarrassing Danger Room accident. “And they’re just different kids. Amara and Rahne were across the world from their parents, and I know their relationships weren’t great. Tabby and Sam probably would have been better off without parents. Jamie hasn’t had any since he was eight. Ray lived in a sewer. So I guess nobody else was volunteering.” Laura’s face flashed through Scott’s mind: not as he thought of her now, laughing at some joke made at Scott’s expense, but marred by fury and pain. “Logan had enough to deal with. I was the oldest, I guess. And I was used to it.” 

Erik’s face was distant. Probably thinking of his own kids, Scott thought, who had committed the unforgivable crime and ran off to join the Avengers. Scott had caught Pietro for coffee a while back, and although he would never admit it the change was probably for the better. Too much pain here, on both sides. “Do you remember what you asked me when I first asked to stay, Scott?” 

“Besides teaching the kids a lot of new curse words?” 

“Beyond that.” 

It had only been six months ago. Scott, somehow, was startled to remember that. “I don’t really remember. Something about what kind of operation you thought we were running here, or something.” There had been a lot of questions, but mostly of the ‘Where’s your secret base’ and ‘What’s your secret plan’ type. None that Erik would care to recall in daily conversation. As talented as they both were at grudges, Erik saved his for a special occasion. 

“You had asked what, exactly, I thought the X-Men were.” Erik leaned back in his chair, eyes never leaving Scott’s face. That was the creepy thing about Magneto, Scott remembered, from when he was sixteen until today. He looked you in the eyes, truly looked at you when he talked to you. As if he was judging you constantly and found you wanting. “I was under the impression the X-Men were a foolish crusade of Charles’ for justice. A kind of activist group. A superhero team.” 

“Superheroes?” Scott laughed sharply. “We were fifteen. The Danger Room’s a nickname and a really creative gym, not preparation for a real battle situation. Fifteen year olds can’t deal with their own problems, much less the world’s.” 

“Yes, that’s what I figured. Though you seemed to find enough fights for all of us.” 

“If by fights you mean borderline Jets versus Sharks scenarios against Mystique’s old crew, yeah. Apocalypse here and there, but we didn’t exactly wake up in the morning swearing to destroy all the Sentinels or something.” Scott paused. “Well, maybe Logan.” 

“You, Scott Summers, seemed to be under the impression Charles was collecting children out of the goodness of his heart to protect them.” 

“I still believe that,” Scott said mildly. Erik’s eyes were alight, and he leaned forward. 

“And what do you call the Danger Room?” 

“Teaching us to protect ourselves.” 

“And the missions?” 

“Teaching us to protect others.” Scott sighed. “If we won’t do it, who will? If Xi’an woke up today and decided that she didn’t want to be on X-Force anymore, she’d still live here. We wouldn’t just kick her out because she’s not - not tough enough, Erik.” 

“She’d still be your sister,” Erik said slowly, satisfied in some way from Scott’s answer. He leaned back in his chair. “The X-Men, New Mutants, and the X-Force are uniquely qualified to help other mutants. So you do. Your team is uniquely qualified to fight for mutant rights, so you do. Because if mutants don’t stand up for each other, nobody else will. Because the X-Men are your family.” 

Scott was uncomfortable with this statement of the most supreme and obvious truth of his world. It was like loudly pointing out that the Professor was in a wheelchair, or that Wonder Man was a douche. “Uh. Yeah.” 

Erik shook his head once, twice, amazed. “So there is a good man left on this earth after all. I was beginning to think we had run out.” 

“What are you talking about?” Scott stood up, beginning to collect the scattered detritus of breakfast on the table. Soon the New Mutants would start waking up for their college classes, and they would re-enact the play all over again. “I know at least thirty good people, and that’s just under this roof.” 

The X-Men were Scott’s family, and Erik had stood on his doorstep and bared his soul wide and asked to be let inside. And Scott, criminally, irreversibly, unforgivably, was Scott, and so he let him in. He didn’t really know how to do anything else, and he wouldn’t be Scott if he could. 

Erik had moved his suitcases upstairs, like everybody else had, and now Scott’s soul was split off into yet another person. It wasn’t responsibility - Erik was 80 years too old for that - and it was a far cry from love. It was little more than eight years at a breakfast table, twenty faces quietly suffering countless indignities while giving him tight, fast hugs, the simple weight of knowing that nobody else would. It was little more than Scott’s life and world, and no matter how many times he split himself further he never felt diminished. 

A new pair of feet clattered down the steps, and Scott turned, the beginnings of a greeting forming on his lips. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_ii._  
  


Cable, Scott was beginning to suspect, was a bad influence on the kids. 

He was a bad influence the same way violent threats spray-painted on lockers were, the way mutant rights were becoming debating points in politician’s debates, as if they were a moral quandary instead of two sweating men in overstuffed suits casually handing out human rights like indulgent grandfathers giving out sweets. He was a bad influence like the news reports on the riots were, like how the X-Men’s missions were gradually scaling up in frequency and severity instead of winding down. He was a living, walking embodiment of a bad future that was getting worse all the time, and the worst part was that the kids were beginning to idolize instead of fear him. 

Scott had noticed. Last time some shitty teenagers had thrown trash at Cable in the street he had choked them out with his metal arm. PTA mothers never tried to get him suspended for ‘gang violence’, as if they were the ones who had attacked the other kids and that the residents Xavier’s Home stayed together out of a pack mentality instead of protection. None of the kids were especially well behaved in the first place, due to the persistent antagonism of everything from their peers to their teachers to supernatural forces, and after the fifth shut down of the school due to bomb threats against the largest mutant population in America the community began blaming somebody. That someone was not usually the person who made the bomb threat. In the last decade Xavier’s Home had made itself a staple in both the community and the public school system, and Scott knew everybody just wanted the mutants to pack up and go away so they wouldn’t have to look at them anymore. 

Cable made you look at him. Cable, in his six foot five inches and biceps of literal steel that Hisako and Xi’an could comfortably sit on, demanded attention and promised pain if he did not get it. People crossed the street when they saw him and Scott had seen more than one old woman either give the evil eye or start praying audibly for protection. Kitty had made a helpful powerpoint on the power of the resting bitch face and how to turn it off, but it hadn’t seemed to stick. Scott had quietly suspected him of massive steroid use, and when he had carefully broached the subject to Cable he received the typical answer anybody received when asking the man about his past: shiftiness and a possibly intentionally confusing answer.

“Possibly. The military genetically manipulated its soldiers at the time, and I know for a fact they drugged us.” He paused, his mouth twisting in wry recollection. “Though I believe the type of drug you are thinking of is more of an inefficient ancestor of the ones they used.”

Scott was wary of asking more, another typical reaction to Cable, but the man had a habit burying the lede. “Ancestor in the leeches kind of way, or in the musket kind of way?” 

“What’s the difference?” 

He probably shouldn’t have asked. 

But, like Karl Marx to a generation of disillusioned Russian peasants, Cable’s implicit promise of current violence that could only be overturned with drastic levels of violence was reassuring to the kids. Jean Paul and Dani had come from hometowns where their powers had practically been worshipped, only to find themselves social pariahs in New York. Kids like Rahne and Xi’an had literal rocks thrown on them in their hometowns, which was a pretty formative experience. Every X-Man believed strongly in the strength of peace and the power of positive social messages in swaying others to your cause, but these ideals were strengthened by the knowledge that violence was inevitable. Cable’s future was little more than a guarantee. 

And Professor Xavier, who could be argued was the most socially idealistic mutant activist prominent on the scene at the moment, didn’t have his boarders run through an increasingly complicated laser beam and death trap simulation every morning for their health. Having Magneto suddenly hanging around and putting autobiographies of Malcom X on the New Mutant’s reading list probably didn’t help. Said reading list also included stuff like Art of War and The Communist Manifesto with all the passages on the uprising of the working class highlighted, but when dinner table conversation started turning towards the responsibility of the bourgeoisie instead of the newest video game Scott really couldn’t complain. 

Cable and Erik often had long, long conversations walking through the garden or over whiskey. It would have made Scott profoundly uncomfortable if he wasn’t relatively sure that, for all of Cable’s depressing life experiences, he was fundamentally an erudite idealist and progressivist who was a frequent proponent of the opportunity for realization of a classical Platonic utopia. Having Professor X and Cable double team Erik in arguments seemed to be good for him, at least, since he was smiling more during breakfast and had stopped threatening to murder teenagers on a daily basis. 

Of course, the danger of Cable was that he was the kind of leader who would abolish the first amendment and right of due process and call it saving mankind from themselves. The bright side of this was that Professor X and Erik would frequently team up to double team him on the merits of free will, at which point Scott was forced to throw up his hands and try and be grateful that the three men were keeping each other on their toes and Doctor McCoy in research papers on philosophy. Erik frequently called Cable an authoritarian; Cable frequently called him a militant segregationist. Professor X was frequently called an asshole. 

Cable was a philosopher, warrior, and nature enthusiast. When not lifting incredible amounts of weights or reading military history, he could be found sitting in the garden looking wistfully at bees, which amused him in their novelty. He rarely looked sad but was frequently amused in a tragic sort of way, as if he was watching a deliriously happy video played as part of those slideshows at someone’s funeral as a memoriam of better times. He never panicked but seemed to approach the territory whenever talking to Scott, and he frequently sought Scott for consultations on his opinions, recent events, how the three teams were going, or on the minutiae of his life. 

Scott didn’t understand why Cable cared to hear him discuss his high school life, his childhood, his friends. But he never understood why it was so easy to talk to Cable about these things, why he basically liked Cable and wanted Cable to like him. Scott was an agreeable sort of person, and had a large mansion full of people who would point to him as the primary caregiver in their lives, but it was rare for him to like somebody as quickly and completely and as frankly sketchy as Cable. 

So sometimes, if Scott wasn’t too busy, he sought Cable out in the garden he seemed to love so much. This morning he had caught Cable enthralled in a flower, reaching out one tree-trunk arm ribbed with callouses, ropy scars, and muscle to rub the petals with a gentle touch that seemed to surprise even him. And as Cable was enthralled in the flower, Scott was enthralled with him. 

Today the conversation was Scott’s childhood again, as it frequently was when it wasn’t about philosophy or Cable dodging questions about his own life. They rarely talked current events, and mutant rights or X-Men business was almost off-limits. “And Tolansky just whipped out one of this gross tongues and smacked the jerk on the back of his head. Man, you should have seen his face! It’s a miracle nobody caught on, the way that guy smelled. No way a baseline coulda smelled like that.” Scott laughed. “Served Duncan right, though boy was Jean mad.” 

Cable didn’t freeze or tense, as he always sat completely still and unbelievably tense, but something about him seemed to spark. “Jean?” 

“Oh...yeah.” Scott’s smile dimmed a little, although it didn’t fade. “I’m sorry, I know I don’t mention her too much.” 

It wasn’t as painful as it used to be. Some of the time. 

Cable shook his head, eyes still riveted completely on Scott. “No, please. I would like to hear more about her. You so rarely talk about her.” 

“If you want more details, you can ask Kitty or Kurt,” Scott evaded, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m not really the best person to ask.” 

“I’d like to hear it from you,” Cable said quietly. “Please.” 

If it had been anyone else, Scott would have politely but firmly deflected. But maybe it was the right day for it, or maybe it had been long enough. Or maybe it was Cable’s voice: not pitying, not curious, but burning. Caring. 

He leaned back slightly, breaking eye contact with Cable to look around at the garden. Storm really had done a great job, with two dozen different varieties of plants blooming in silent joy all around them. He could see why Cable liked it. “Well, I’m biased. But she was really the most amazing person I knew. She was the second mutant Professor X picked up, so it was just me and her for a long time. We really only had each other. We used to spend days just talking, running around, talking about our lives. She was from the suburbs. Loving parents. Used to tell me about her girlfriends.” He twitched a smile. “I remember thinking, man, how shallow is this chick? How perfect was her life, right? But it really wasn’t like that at all. Everything good she had, it was because she was good. Or maybe everything good she had made her good. I don’t know.” 

“Were you jealous?” 

“Oh, yeah. She wouldn’t have given me the time of day if it wasn’t for Professor X and our mutations. But I think in a lot of ways things were always harder for her than they were for me, especially as we got older. Her powers were more than she could deal with, at times. She wanted to have a life outside of the X-Men. That kind of thing.” Scott laughed. “Man, why am I telling you all of this?” 

“It’s how you remember her,” Cable said quietly. There was an odd note in his voice, something Scott couldn’t place. “There’s nothing more sacred than that. In Askani culture, we do not give an idealized picture of our dead. We remember them through stories, and giving a false account is disrespectful and damaging towards their memory.” 

“Sounds nice.” Scott snorted. “Better than in American culture, where we aren’t allowed to talk about it. People get all awkward and pitying if you bring it up.” 

“We had a lot of dead.” 

“Yeah. I bet you did.” Scott watched the flowers dip in the wind for a while, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. He felt oddly tingly. Maybe this was what relief felt like. “You wanna hear something true, Cable? I loved her. I loved her more than breathing. I loved the feel of her brain on mine. God, how many guys can say that they know what their fiance’s mind feels like? I miss it. I’ll never feel it again. I can hold other hands, I can kiss other girls, whatever. But we’ll never have a silent conversation again, never talk telepathically or feel her telekinesis on my skin. A kiss is nothing to that.” 

Cable placed a hand on his shoulder, and gripped so tight it was almost painful. Scott sucked in a breath, released it. “She knew, Scott. Anyone with eyes could see it.” 

“Yeah.” Scott laughed a little, although none of it was really very funny. “This kind of stuff isn’t supposed to happen to kids, you know? I’ve had a lot of people die on me but I never really got used to it. Kids aren’t supposed to die.” 

Scott felt more than heard the sharp intake of breath besides him, the careful and measured exhale. Cable retracted his hand. “My parents died when I was fairly young.” 

“Really? What were they like?” 

He paused, eyes narrowed slightly, as if remembering something far away. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “they loved each other very much.” 

The trite line sounded more significant, somehow, coming from him. Scott nodded slowly. “They were part of the Askani clan, right?” 

“No. The Askani raised me and trained me in the war against Apocalypse. My parents were...refugees, searching for a better life for me. They died when I was eight. The last happy memories of my life were spent with them.” His voice had become clipped, detached. “The Askani loved me, but every day was a battle. They had to teach me to survive. My parents’ only concern was to teach me to be a good man. It was my father who taught me how important our principles were, how vital it was to be kind. How much mankind needed a savior. It was the Askani who taught me that I had to be that savior, taught me how.” 

Scott had the sudden feeling he was a little bit in over his head. He hadn’t known much about Cable’s life: a despotic dictator a thousand years in the future, a military background with his clan fighting against Apocalypse, mutant concentration camps looming large and ugly in the mind. Cable, he had explained wryly, was too valuable for the concentration camps. And that he had slaughtered the first three they had put him in. 

“You know, my problems never seem so important next to you.” 

The comment wasn’t meant as flippant as it sounded, and Cable smiled again. “ ‘Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’, yes? This world is different from the one I grew up in. The difference is subtle, and hard to explain. More innocent. You have your supervillains, but little death. Your family is whole, unmarred by strife. Your heroes are young and innocent. I feel sometimes as if I dirty it.” 

“Cable, you don’t - “ 

He waved one hand. “Cable is a dirty name too. I chose it because I knew the heroes of your time went by war names, meant to protect your identities and to mark your resolution against those who would fight against you. But the more time I spend in your home, Scott, the less need I see for...posturing. Dramatics. I like your simplicity. My name is Nathan. It is the Christian name my parents gave me, and it has not been safe to use for many years. I feared it never would again. I would like it if you used it, Scott.” 

“Nathan.” A memory turned, distant yet so overwhelmingly fond he could barely stand to think of it. It was of him and Jean, late at night, holding each other close and talking about every plan they had for the rest of their lives. What their house would look like, their children. Their children’s names. Nathan had been Jean’s favorite. “It’s a beautiful name.” 

He didn’t ask for his last name, and Cable never offered. 

  
  


_iii._

 

Scott didn’t really know what Rachel was doing here, but it couldn’t possibly be good. 

He didn’t like to say that, because Rachel was the kind of person who would actively attempt to make everybody think she was up to no good for the sake of her strangely rebellious ego. She refused to change out of all of that leather, for one thing, or turn her rock music down. Letting her know that Scott slightly distrusted her intentions felt too much like letting her win, so he grinned and bore it and told her not to put her elbows on the table, which elicited strangely alarmed glances and a kick to Nathan’s shin that she probably thought was discreet. 

Yes, she and Nathan were hiding something. Siblings always did. Siblings from the future did more than most, their hushed secrets turning into screams behind closed doors and furtive glances when they thought nobody else were looking. They could communicate with eyebrows, kicks to the shin, and carefully placed insults as to their mutual inability to get a girlfriend. It wasn’t a secret that they were siblings - Nathan’s shocked exclamation of her name the minute she burst open the doors to the house ruining the game before it even began - but there were family things they obviously wanted to keep secret. They probably even thought they were good at keeping secrets. 

Joke’s on them. Scott had twenty siblings. They couldn’t win this game.

Not that they didn’t try. Rachel, ten years younger and with about five times the number of piercings, hung out far more with the New Mutants and X-Men then she did Nathan and his “boring old man club, god, get a life, get laid, like I care.” She jumped out windows with Erik to extract righteous mutant judgement on the unholy while Nathan loudly preached how wrong it was to attack semi-innocent politicians. It was fairly easy to forget she was from the future at all, if it wasn’t for the sparse moments when she laughed at the idea of a representative government and was charmed at the notion of bees. It was then she was most like her brother. It was in the curve of their lips, the way they tossed their hair, their confident little half-smiles, their laughter. Scott loved it all, hoarded the unguarded moments more common with him than with anyone else in the house like gold. He loved seeing Nathan’s half-smile, hearing Rachel’s battle roar as she leapt into the air. 

Scott wasn’t unused to love. But when Rachel burned, his own heart was set on fire. 

Rachel, three months after she kicked open the house doors, dumped a single backpack on the ground, and screamed for Nathan, hadn’t quite acclimatized to the group so much as desensitized. The kids had a procedure for welcoming new arrivals in a way that they probably thought was discrete but was in reality fairly obvious. But most of those arrivals were terrified twelve to seventeen year olds, faced with a large disruption in their identities in more than one way, and not a battle-scarred young woman with an attitude problem. 

It wouldn’t have been a problem, if Professor Xavier hadn’t demonstrated an inability to control her and Nate an unwillingness. She didn’t want or need training. She didn’t want, yet needed to, follow basic 21st century laws. At his wit’s end, Scott brought in Logan for an inspirational yet violent therapy session. 

“Chick’s insane.” Logan volunteered, as starstruck as Scott had ever seen him. “Got almost more robots than I did. Threatened to burn off some guy’s tongue. And Laura liked her.” 

“She does what needs to be done,” Laura said ominously, before wandering away to play Connect Four with Hisako and Xi’an. Logan waggled his eyebrows at Scott, as if to say, ‘you see?’. Scott did see. Laura didn’t like anybody who she hadn’t personally witnessed threaten to kill a man. 

Scott found Rachel outside, looking at the weird angel statue with an odd expression on her face. She was still in her uniform, all bright reds and yellows. It didn’t look much like a standard New Mutant or even X-Man uniform, but neither did Rachel. 

“I’ll never understand old Xavier’s decorative choices,” Rachel said. “This place has way too much religious iconography.” 

“Wait until he rises from the dead three days later, you’ll be surprised.” Scott stood next to her, rubbing his chin slightly. “It used to be worse, actually. The Professor inherited this place when his parents died, but he hated all their taste in art. Said it was pretentious.” 

“Pretty rich, coming from him.” 

Scott shrugged, unwilling to admit it but unable to argue. “Well, it would have been rude in rich people culture to sell it or throw it away, so he just kept them all out on display while the kids were growing up. Collected the insurance on half the collection before Jamie even reached 18.”

Rachel laughed, cropped and slightly frizzy red hair brushing against her chin. Scott knew enough about hair - thanks, Kitty - that he knew that it was badly taken care of: split ends and rough textures, cut unevenly and unprofessionally layered. It was the little things that drove that whole ‘Apocalypse’ thing home. She was short, too, and built slightly unevenly with a gaunt face and little in the way of thighs or breasts. She and Cable also frequently had to fight over who got the dining table seat with the best view of all the exits, which was less endearing and more worrying after a few weeks. 

It was a hard subject to approach, but that was most things about Rachel. More than anything, she didn’t really care for beating around the bush. Scott sighed, readjusting his glasses. “Rachel, I know I can’t tell you what to do, but - “ 

She groaned. “I so don’t care about whatever it is - “

“But as a representative not only of the X-Men and mutantkind, you have to change your behavior.”

“Or what, you’ll ground me?” she sneered. “I’m really not interested in - “ 

“No. I don’t care if you’re interested. You took on a responsibility when you voluntarily, of your own free will, joined this team. You agreed to act in terms of how we, as a team, agreed the X-Men, New Mutants, and X-Force should act and present themselves to the world. I’m giving you this conversation now, in private, so I don’t have to give it in the field in a dangerous situation. Or in front of the others. You need to curtail your behavior and start listening to me in the field unconditionally, or our performance as a team and the way the world views us is going to suffer.” 

“The world already hates us! We can’t improve that, we can just try to curtail it. I’m trying to cut off the problem at its source - “ 

“No, you’re hurting people first.” Scott scrubbed at his eyes, suddenly exhausted. “I know how frustrating it is to be reactionary. God, trust me, I do. But if we try to take any action against those assholes all they’re going to do is blame us. If we break any laws they’re going to blame us. If we act in any way other than perfect and morally upright and the ideal superhero team who goes on lunchboxes, they’re never going to listen to a word we say. And yes,” he said quickly, seeing Rachel’s mouth open already, “they hate us anyway. We still have to try.” 

“Magneto-” 

She was one of the last people who still called him Magneto at home. It may be related to how Cable didn’t tell Scott his real name for several months, but he wasn’t about to ask. “Erik is an adult who knows how far to push the envelope. He lives in that gray area and knows how to stick to it. And, like, after being a terrorist for thirty years, anything you do that’s not terrorism looks really impressive. You really don’t want to go down that route. Erik wasted almost all his life living like that, and you know he regrets it.” 

“I’m so sick of this,” Rachel muttered, still looking mutinous. “You don’t know what Nate and I have seen, Scott. Every time I see one of those dickbags on television sprouting off about what a menace we are I see what that kind of talk leads to. It’s fucking concentration camps, and those fucking concentration camps came because people like you and Xavier never thought the situation was bad enough that we needed to take serious action.” 

“People like Apocalypse manipulated those dickbags and became a despotic alien dictator,” Scott said, “and that’s why there were concentration camps. Relations are already improving. Things are getting better, you just have to trust that.” 

“Trust in what,” Rachel said snidely, “the future? I’m from the future. It’s a nightmare.” 

It was fairly hard to argue against someone you were acutely aware had had a worse life than you could possibly conceive of. Scott sighed, carefully rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You’re a grown woman, Rachel. I can’t tell you how to live our life outside as my position as the commander of your team and of this house. I’m not your dad, but I hope that someday we can - Rachel?” 

“Never mind,” she said, scrubbing at her eyes. Scott had no idea what he had said, but he caught a flash of some horrible pain across her face before she wiped it away. “Just - never mind.” 

“Rachel, I just - “

“Yeah, I know.” Rachel scowled, as if she thought that it compensate for her suspiciously red eyes. “I know. Whatever.”

Whatever meant yes in teenager and Rachel speak. “Things’ll get better, Rachel.”

“No,” she said, “they won’t.”

  
  



	3. Five Years After

 

Scott met the little girl standing in the lobby of the group home, a bandana pulled tight around the top half of her face and a small purple suitcase sitting in her lap. It had little flowers on it, and was coming loose at one of the seams. 

The paperwork had already all been signed, the meeting with her child protection agent and her social worker over with, and the small supervised session with her successfully concluded. The paperwork was pushed through impressively quickly, as it usually was for mutants - a testament both to the trustworthiness of Xavier’s and the general tendency to look at mutant orphans as Dickensian characters, except without the sympathetic natures and scrappy helpless attitude. It was usually easier to just get custody from the parents in terms of a boarding school contract that just so happened to last all year, but Xavier’s seemed to have an unusually high proportion of orphans. Hank had theorized that stress was a factor in activating an X-gene; Scott just thought that no decent parent would want to sign away their child. 

Scott crouched down in front of her, making his footsteps as loud as possible. He wasn’t really expecting a heartwarming ‘Just Adopted!’ moment, but a little excitement instead of placid apathy would have been nice. 

“Heya, Ruth. Ready to head out?”

With half her face covered it was slightly difficult to read facial expressions, but the slight tension and the white knuckled grip on the handle of the suitcase told slightly more. 

“Sorry please.” 

“Want to take my hand?” Scott placed his on her knee. She moved her own and slid it into his. Your hand never really felt so big and masculine until a little girl was holding it, really. 

“Okay yes please.” 

“Let’s get you home, then.”

 

Ruth “Blindfold” Aldine, Age 8:

“What the sweet lovin’-”

“That’s a lot, even for you, Scott!”

“Mein gott, dude, talk about trouble -”

Wolverine opened another beer, downing it suspiciously quickly, muttering something about ‘more goddamned cute children in my house’. 

Scott waved his arms, calling vaguely for order. It was useless, they never listened to him. They all saw that poetry he wrote for Jean in high school, all credibility was gone. Only endless bitching and tenacity was all they had left. 

“Dude, we can’t take in a little kid. That’s not a boarding school, that’s a nursery!” Kitty shuddered dramatically. “The crying! The science fair projects! This is too crazy.” 

“You loved science fair,” Kurt pointed out. “You won every time.” 

“Yeah, but my science fair was actually cool.” She turned back to Scott, running her fingers through her hair. “Really, man, I get it. But it was so hard with Hisako and Jamie, and twelve  is really different developmentally from eight. You’re not supervising her, you’re raising her.”

“I used to look after eight year olds and younger kids at foster homes all the time,” Scott said, “I know how to do it.”

“You were also twelve and that was really messed up.” 

“Uh?” Scott said. Everyone around the table groaned. Logic wasn’t going to win. 

Logic couldn’t win, at least with Scott. He had good points, in that Ruth was literally born with empty eye sockets and accidentally punched through a wall when some other girls made fun of her for it two weeks ago. She wasn’t as powerful as Jean - Scott was beginning to realize that nobody really was - but psychic powers of any kind were always extremely unmanageable unless trained. Xi’an and her ambiguously supervillain powers were proof enough of that, and Xi’an was even well adjusted. Ruth had no parents, nobody to hold her at night when she was having a nightmare and making all the rats in the house spontaneously combust, and nobody to tell her that reading everyone’s mind and making them all like her was unethical. Leave any psychic untrained for too long and you ended up like Charles Xavier. 

“Okay,” Rogue said finally, “I see your point.” 

Rogue, only allowed back in the house once she took off her Avengers uniform and left her communicator by the door, snapped her gum and looked thoughtful. “I hate to say it, but Cyclops Was Right.” 

The table giggled, except for Scott and Wolverine, who only looked confused. 

“Destiny really saved my life when she adopted me, but she couldn’t stop my powers from making me a monster.” She raised her hand to cut off all burgeoning protests. “Don’t argue when there’s a good woman in a coma right now cuz of me. Any power can become monstrous when not controlled, or helped, or loved. If that little girl needs us, and if she could do harm to others, it’s the call of the X-Men to do something. If it’s hard then it’s hard. Nobody ever said it’d be easy, just that it’s necessary.”

The table was silent for a second.

“Ugh,” Kurt said, “the Avengers made you into such a goody two shoes.” 

“Oh my god, Rogue grew some morals, that’s so gross - “

Scott slapped the table and glared everyone into submission, something that was thankfully easy to do when you wore sunglasses all the time and was the main source of his authority. The younger kids said that when you looked into his disapointed red tinted frames you could see your sins. “As disgusting as it is that Rogue’s an Avenger now, I’d appreciate it if everyone acted with her maturity. I’d suggest taking it to a vote, but as this is a dictatorship the vote would just be so you all would feel better. But you’re still the X-Men - the  _ first  _ X-men - and since we’re the core of this house I want to hear your say.”

None of them lived at home anymore, of course - Kitty going to Oxford and Kurt running Excalibur with her, Rogue with the Avengers, Jean’s face echoing through empty hallways. Logan and Ororo and Hank living their adult lives occasionally far away. But Scott knew it was them. It’d always be them. 

Kurt, always the first to talk, raised his hand. “All fun aside, if she needs us she should come. This place is for people with special needs, and there shouldn’t be a need too special. I thought I needed a hologram to be normal when I came here, but the X-Men showed me that whoever I am is how God wanted me to live. So Scott’s crazy, but he’s right.” 

“We have to wait a few years,” Kitty said, shaking her head. “Scott has six minors under his belt now and is still babysitting the New Mutants. They’re barely even in college, and we can’t pretend that they don’t still need us. That’s five people who need his constant attention, plus the fourteen loose supervision, and the X-Men conglomerate. With training and missions, adding on a little kid is suicide.” 

“But you think it’s the right thing to do.” Scott said quietly. 

Kitty’s mouth twisted. “Yeah,” she admitted, “I do. But that isn’t always the end of it.”

It was for Scott, of course, and they all knew it, but somebody had to inject a little bit of reality into the equation. 

“What’d Erik and Jamie say?” Wolverine asked finally, using his claws to pop off another beer cap. He had been mostly disinterested in the conversation so far, but had definitely started paying attention when Kitty had started talking. 

“Well, she wouldn’t have any Danger Room training. That’s a non starter straight off the bat. The usual rules - no missions until 13, no active duty until 15, no unsupervised missions until 18 - still apply, obviously. I think we’d have the Professor work really heavily with her for control, but who knows when he’s even around. Jamie’s willing to put her into the X-Factor and build that team dynamic for when she’s older, but he said outright that she isn’t even going into anything but the lightest training sessions. Jamie also likes kids and is really excited to work with her and take responsibility for at least some of that. Erik thinks we’re crazy but I saw him buying Hello Kitty bedspreads, so I think he’s okay with it.” Scott turned wryly to Logan. “I’ve also seen Logan get in his beer while he can because he doesn’t drink around little kids.” 

Logan drank more beer, resentfully this time. 

“It seems we’re all in agreement,” Rogue said, leaning her chair back on two legs. “Didn’t even need to call us here from all over at all.”

“Seems like,” Scott said cheerily. 

“Seems like he already knew we’d go for it.”

“It’s all about that false choice.”

“Also seems like there’s something he’s not telling us, so he can sucker in our agreement while the deal seems good and make it too late to back out once it turns sour.”

The empty sound of another beer bottle popping echoed through the suddenly silent room. 

“Well,” Scott said, wincing slightly, “First of all, you were never this annoying before you were an Avenger and I think they’ve ruined you. Second of all, she may be a little bit blind.”

Weirdly enough, the room wasn’t silent anymore.

 

The whole house threw a party for her the night after she arrived: the first night given for her to acclimatize and adjust to the new home, and the first day to meet everyone and introduce themselves. She insisted on shaking everyone’s hand with saying, with a very firm and mature face, “Ruth Aldine, I’m eight, and I live here now so sorry please.”

“What’s there to be sorry about?” Scott asked, after he had wrangled her away from Jamie’s enthusiastic hug. 

The little girl just shrugged oddly, playing with her fingers. “Just things I say, pretty weird. Don’t mean to much just do. No thanks.”

“So,” Scott said carefully, “when you say no thanks - “

“No, thank you, please, sorry, Yes? Pardon. Please ignore mostly, please.” She paused a beat. “Sometimes I’m really sorry but sometimes not.”

She had lingered for several minutes over Wolverine’s claws, rubbing them between her fingers and turning them about everywhere. Her little hand was less than half the size of Logan’s, delicate and smooth where his resembled the lovechild between a bear and a lumberjack, but the look on her face was enraptured. Scott could only guess that it was the sensation: the smooth and strong yet flexible nature of the claws, the slight pucker of the skin where they slide in and out, the hairy and rough arm and palms. 

Ruth didn’t actually appear to be quite blind, although it was hard to really tell and she was recalcitrant on the matter. She had no problems moving around, shaking hands, or looking completely enthralled when Hank popped his head out of the lab to welcome her, but she never quite made eye contact and tripped over thin air a lot. She said it was because someone had dropped a book at that location two months from now, but Scott was suspicious. 

The little party they had thrown for her, organized by Dani and Xi’an and set up by a small squadron of Jamies, more or less resembles one of the famous X-Men family cookouts only with less drinking and more child friendly music. Scott decided about two hours in that so far it was a roaring success in comparison with the last three cookouts, mostly because Ororo was standing by with a small raincloud and eagle eyes on Logan’s grill, which he had insisted on manning due to an unfair and probably correct belief that he was the most masculine figure in the house. 

Ruth ran off to go play ‘How many things of Bobby’s can we destroy before he notices’ with Hisako and a wolfed Rahne (The number was usually eight, twelve if Johnny had come with him and was being distracting). Scott kept a careful eye on her, leaning on the tree next to the grill. 

“Logan, that’s disgusting. You do this every time.”

Logan sunk his claw into one of the sausages, taking a bite out of his as he used his other one to turn the meat. “Builds character.” 

“You don’t know where those things have been!”

Turning his head to make direct eye contact with Scott, he took one large bite into the sausage and chewed slowly, letting the blood from the still slightly rare sausage dribble down his chin. Scott made a face. 

He stood in silence with Logan for a minute, listening only to the crackle and dull roar of the grill. He tallied everyone up, talking and laughing in their small cliques of friendships. The New Mutants had bulled Jamie into a seven against one soccer match again. Ruth was laughing as Rahne nipped playfully at her heels, making her trip and land face first in the grass. Scott’s heart jumped a beat as he made a motion to move, but in the next second she was laughing and rolling around with Rahne in the grass. 

Logan was watching her carefully too, burning the meat. He pretended he was a lot better at cooking than he was. He probably didn’t notice, having almost no taste buds. Scott had seen him bite absentmindedly into a dead deer once. “Cute kid.”

“You say that about most kids.”

“So do you.” Scott grunted in admission. “You sure you’re ready for this?”

“She doesn’t really look like a handful.” Logan raised an eyebrow, and Scott amended, “No more than anyone else, I mean. Less than a lot. Kids are resilient.”

A cheer broke out from the small soccer team, Jamie and his team of five Jamies (“Jamie and the Jamies” was their band, soccer, and dance troupe name) having scored a goal. “I’ve met a lot of kids in my time,” Logan said, “and they all need different shit. You can’t help them all, Scott.”

Scott turned to him, tensing almost imperceptibly. “Is this about Ilyana?”

The sausages burned and popped again, red skin scorching to black. “She needs help, kid,” Logan said bluntly. “Help like Laura. I’ve seen it before. Laura wasn’t ready to be okay for a very long time. It takes a while to even get to the point where you can try. And that was with my help. I don’t even know what to do with Ilyana. Hell, I hope I never do. Shit’s fucked.” 

Laura, currently supervising the proceedings in a large tree and a good book across the field, turned unerringly towards them and narrowed her eyes in warning before returning to her book. Laura scared Scott a little. 

“I can’t just give up on her,” Scott said, tired. Ilyana tended to have that effect. “She just needs some extra attention, that’s all.”

“Her problems aren’t the kind that can be solved by a good little road trip and cathartic experience.”

“You know, I have lots of other problem solving tactics.”

Logan ate another sausage, transferring several more to a plate. “It’s a big one.”

“It works!”

“With sad teenagers. Ilyana’s different.” 

There was a small, muffled exploding sound and suddenly Kurt was standing next to them, a single party hat on his head and eagerly extended three fingered hands. Logan passed the plate to him without looking up, and Kurt shouted a muffled thank you between bites of sausage and disappeared in the next second. Scott sighed. 

Then Kurt came back, eyes wide and hands suspiciously empty. “Wait, we are talking about Ilyana? Has she left her room?”

Scott massaged the bridge of his nose, mindful of his glasses. “No, Kurt. I don’t know how you even picked up on that.”

Kurt and Ilyana seemed to operate on the same odd wavelength. Kurt had explained once with enigmatically waving hands that when he teleported he was using the same hell dimension Ilyana had lived in as a shortcut. Kurt somehow managed to have several fun, yet slightly terrifying misadventures with his may-or-may-not-be-the-literal-real-devil birth father and hordes of demons with Ilyana, cementing a strange tolerance on her part for life.

Kurt’s new status as the possible Antichrist had been told to Scott over the phone in a conversation that started with “Please don’t be mad!” and ended with Scott reluctantly admitting that, given that at least half of his phone calls with Kurt started that way, it honestly could have gone worse. Kurt also apparently had, in the three years since had left home, became a catholic priest, space pirate, tour manager for Dazzler, and managed to wrangle annual family camping trips out of Rogue, Mystique, and Destiny. Scott had asked if his new Possibly-The-Devil Father had been included in said camping trips and Kurt had been recalcitrant on the matter. The end result of this was that Ilyana apparently found Kurt nostalgic and sometimes deigned to speak with him and only rarely threatened him with vehement and excruciatingly detailed threats of death. 

“I’m very talented!” Kurt flashed a disarming grin, which was somehow far more dashing than when he had been sixteen. About five months after Kurt had turned eighteen Kitty had apparently woken up hungover in his room, realized with sudden and profound understanding that he was objectively extremely attractive, and woke up the whole house by screaming. “And we are having sad adult discussions about little Ishka, yes?”

“Technically.” Scott’s voice could have frozen Amara. “Technically you are also just as much as an adult as I am and technically you could take this more seriously.” 

“Technically Vogue magazine interviewed and gave me a cover spread, yes? I am a Cover Girl now. I do not feel that you can talk down to me anymore.”

“Oh, my mistake. Please lead the X-Men, hallowed Kurt, you’ve become so qualified.”

“You could not do my job if you tried,” Kurt sniffed. “Until someone else in this team can do a quintuple backflip off of a moving vehicle my niche is filled.”

“Our new eight year old can levitate that vehicle.”

“But could she do it dashingly?”

Scott groaned. “You are so fired. Please leave.”

“You don’t pay me!”

“I’m docking your allowance.”

Kurt gasped, scandalized. “I have  _ expenses _ -”

Logan stabbed a steak harder than was strictly necessary. Both men fell silent. 

After a tense second, Scott finally said, “We’re just discussing the climate of the house for the new few weeks. We need a stable situation for Ruth.” 

For the first time since the conversation began Kurt let his fangs slide back into his mouth and took a serious expression. “No such thing as stable with the X-Men, ja.”

“She’s a member of this house before she’s an X-Man. She needs to know that we’re reliable and are working to help her.”

“And you think Ilyana…”

Scott clenched his jaw, a muscle jumping. “We’re trying to keep it stable for her too. I don’t know what she needs. She isn’t exactly telling us.” 

The small group fell silent for the moment, watching teenagers browse the food table and push each other onto the grass, laughing. Sam and Jean Paul were dancing to the music, and Hisako was trying to climb Laura’s tree. Laura, in an uncharacteristic display of tolerance, resigned to throwing pinecones down at her and pretended it was a training exercise. 

“Kitty and I are returning to Excalibur in a week,” Kurt said suddenly. Rachel was still in Britain, helming the team and probably getting into fist fights with Captain Britain. “Ilyana shall come with. She listens to Rachel, and she can help. If anyone can understand it is our Rachel. And helping people sometimes helps you too, yeah.”

Logan grunted again. “It’ll work.”

“You’re sure?” Scott didn’t like the plan. Scott could handle her. He didn’t want to destabilize her by moving countries, make her feel like she was being shuffled off. The last thing he wanted was to make her feel like they couldn’t deal with her. Their only problem was that they couldn’t deal with her. It was, and always had been, the hardest sort of thing for Scott to admit. “It’s...I don’t like it.”

“If there was any reason not to you’d find one,” Logan pointed out. “Got anything?”

Scott had nothing. 

He heard a shriek of laughter from his right, and the three men had tensed up before Scott recognized an amber wolf nipping playfully at the heels of a sprinting Ruth. She was running towards Scott, screaming with laughter, and jumped to collide with Scott’s kneecaps. 

“Please help! Rahne’s being mean!”

Smiling slightly, Scott bent down and put his arm around her shoulders, letting her press closer to him with a squeal as Rahne started pawing at Scott. 

“The ice cream is going to be all gone if you two keep this up.” 

Rahne caught the hint and stepped back, raising herself up on her hind legs and smoothly transforming into her human form. She barely stumbled, arching her back gracefully as her hair receded and her claws retracted into her hands. The transformation was almost beautiful now, a far cry from when she was sixteen and every time almost looked like it hurt. “I prefer mince pie myself.”

“Nobody likes mince pie, that’s why you never get any.”

She sniffed imperiously, the sound still smelling suspiciously like a wolf’s snort. “I hear Scotland has free college tuition now, Scotty, I’m really thinking about it. The wide open moors, the stormy seas, the bagpipes of home.”

“Captain Britain.”

“Point.” She winked at Blindfold, who still seemed slightly confused as to where the wolf had gone. “See you later, honey.”

Rahne waltzed off to go try and design a fireworks show with Jubilee, who was in charge of the light based entertainment of the evening. She was trying to play with the sound design this time for Ruth, working under the horrible constraints of “Please don’t deafen her” by Scott. Bobby wouldn’t stop asking her to make giant dicks in the sky again, reasoning that the only person here who it would be inappropriate for was blind anyway, and that Hisako was fourteen and perfectly capable of emotionally handling a giant dick in the sky. Scott had argued that he himself was not emotionally capable of handling a giant dick in the sky and had shut that argument down where it stood. 

He would have threatened to blame Johnny for being a horrible influence on Bobby and finally have an excuse to make them break up, but Bobby had always been like that and Johnny was more of an enabler than anything else. Besides, Scott liked having Bobby be a subtle informat into the Fantastic Four operation, and it was worth the inherent disgrace of dealing with the Fantastic Four to have the upper hand over them. He would have been worried that the painfully white superhero team was also trying to do the same thing with Bobby if it wasn’t for the fact that they liked to pretend that this was peacetime and that it was not every team for themselves. Naive fools. 

People assumed he couldn’t control Bobby. Scott could control anyone so long as he was in control of the Lucky Charms imports, perhaps save Illyana and Rachel. Cable was six foot five and roughty three hundred pounds of muscle and metal but he crumpled like a house of cards. But Scott couldn’t control unhappiness any more than anyone could, any more than he desperately needed to. Some things Lucky Charms and good morning hugs just couldn’t fix.

Bobby had also come to him with a ten slide powerpoint on why he should be allowed to date Johnny Storm, a tried and true method that had been used in the past for Jamie’s petition for medical school, police academy, and culinary school simultaneously. Scott didn’t play favorites, but Jamie was his favorite. Despite this, he had found a surreptitious leaderboard posted on one of the back study rooms of “Scott’s Current Favorite”, together with a point system and the promise of eternal shame to the winner. Some whispered that the list of “Scott’s Least Favorite” is found scrawled in blood in the creepy part of the basement where the lights didn’t work, etched into the bones of Evan Monroe. 

Ruth was still pressing up against Scott’s leg, empty eye sockets turned in the direction of the screams of laughter from across the field. Scott smiled, knowing she couldn’t see it. Or maybe she could. Scott had never met a mysterious eight year old before but he had yet to get a solid picture of Ruth’s character at all. He supposed it was alright. They had time. 

“Are you having fun yet?”

The small girl chewed on her knuckles, appearing slightly uninterested in the conversation for favor of trying to hear who was winning the soccer game. “Yes please.”

“Do you feel okay about being here now?”

For the first time she turned to look at Scott, craning her head and meeting his mirrored glasses with her own bright purple bandana. “Five years from yes please I will be talking with the Director of Shield and she will go, have you been having a good time? And I will say yes because mutants will be free. And I’ll cry because I’m happy to be here. So pardon yes. Three months and two days from now yes I will be sad because Bobby will have spilled soda on Hello Kitty bedsheets. But not usually.”

“Do you know where I’ll be?” Scott asked, partly because he wanted to know, partly because he didn’t. He didn’t know if she could control her powers, or even wanted to. They would have to figure this all out eventually, but maybe for once eventually could be tomorrow instead. Today he would have to settle for the faint smile dimpling a round face and the bright feeling of bringing a new suitcase up the stairs, purple wheels clicking against every step. 

Ruth looked around the field, empty gaze scanning every smiling teenager and smoking grill, the bright flashes of light erupting from Jubilee’s fingertips and the distant sound of Erik and Cable’s voices. 

She didn’t say anything, but Scott thought that maybe he might know what she meant. 

 


	4. Six Years After

When Scott flipped on the light and stepped into the living room - the living living room, not the nice living room - he was halfway expecting to find Peter and Kitty sneaking in with alcohol yet again. Instead he found only Cable, a woman, a man, and a teenage boy lying down in a loose circle playing cards and scowling.

“Please tell me I’m not going to find Deadpool eating Corn Flakes out of the bag again,” Scott said wearily. “I really can’t deal with that right now.”

Scott, of course, couldn’t deal with Deadpool at any moment in time or day, much less at three am and playing what looked like Texas Hold ‘em. He could only assume that was what Cable had been doing with his time lately, seeing as the older man would disappear for months at a time and return tight lipped about anything that he had been doing. Of course, he was recalcitrant on everything: from what cereal they had in the future to what exactly a ‘Mr. Sinister’ was and how exactly he was supposed to kill an ‘Apocalypse’, and he only found out that with the copious assistance of three bottles of moonshine.

“Wade tries to respect restraining orders, thank god.” Cable drew a few more cards from the deck. “I hope you aren’t assuming I’m hanging out with him whenever I leave.”

He was. “No I’m not.”

The woman with the strange tattoo over her eye snorted. “Yes you are.”

Cable didn’t look over at her, apparently used to this. “I’ve been babysitting you all, haven’t I?”

“You’ve been in an alternate dimension,” the man pointed out. He had stringy chin length blonde hair and a face that might have been attractive if it wasn’t so gaunt. “I do not understand the rules of this game.”

“That’s why we’re still winning.”

Scott briefly entertained the idea of going back to sleep and letting somebody else deal with all of this. Maybe he could make Erik do it. If he didn’t want them killed with a barrage of small iron nails, he could call in Jamie. Somebody. Somebody else could handle this.

“Cable, couldn’t you have waited until the morning for this?” Scott asked again. He knew nobody else would. If he walked out and let someone find them the first thing they would do was to run and tell Scott. He was twenty three and way too young to be the only adult in the house. “And let me know beforehand if you’re having weird guests?”

Cable sighed, laying his cards face down on the smooth carpet and batting away the teenage boy’s hand from where he was trying to pick the carpet apart. The boy wasn’t even attempting to play the game, propping his head on his chin and watching the game with half-hooded eyes. He looked strongly like the older man - too young to be his father, but maybe his brother.

With startling grace for someone so large Cable rolled onto his feet, the woman not bothering to look up from her game in favor of an intense staring match with the other player. Scott crossed his arms, wishing he at least had the decency to look abashed.

But Cable never looked anything other than placid and calm, a steadying rock even in Scott’s tumultuous life. He was reassuring to have around, if still terrifying. “You know I don’t ask for very much, Scott. I already owe a lot to you.”

This was either going to end up with Scott having to plan out four more bedrooms or having to get everyone out of bed for an attack. “I don’t like where this is going.”

“I know. Trust me, I know.” Cable ran a hand through his hair, a habit eerily similar to one Jean used to have. “Would you believe a time travelling refugee story?”

Hard not to, when he already had two under his roof. “I’d believe anything at this rate.”

A kitchen cabinet slammed shut, startling Scott and eliciting a grunt out of Cable. Two or three more cabinets were obviously opened and closed. Cable looked pained. “I told her to be quiet.”

From behind them the pasty woman crowed victory as the blond man cursed in a gutteral alien tongue. The teenage boy hoisted himself up, looking faintly interested for the first time, as a teenage girl with a strong jaw and a buzzcut in a ripped Metallica t-shirt and faded jeans sauntered in sipping at one of Hisako’s juice boxes.

“Sup.”

Scott looked at her blankly. She sucked at the juice box again, never breaking direct eye contact.

“Ellie, please be polite,” Cable said, with the rote inflection of someone who had said this a disappointingly large amount of times before. Scott knew the feeling.

The girl scowled. “It’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead.”

“Okay, that’s it.” Scott clapped his hands. “Everyone into the kitchen. I’m making coffee. And not getting anymore sleep tonight, apparently.”

Every kitchen looked different in the night, no matter how many soft lights were switched on around them. Hidden shadows lurked in the corners of the counters that weren’t there in the daytime, the endless thumps of running feet overhead silent. The silence was fraught, broken only by the scraping of chairs around a small round wooden table quietly shoved into a corner of the kitchen that Scott hastily cleared groceries and electronics off of. Set at the opposite corner of the kitchen from the normal breakfast table, it was a relic of a smaller house and was now used mainly as a repository of junk and the occasional quiet conversation. The normal breakfast table, made mainly out of three normal rectangular wooden tables pushed together, was made eerie by the sheer fact that nobody was sitting there. Scott somehow didn’t want to use it tonight. There was an actual formal dining room, of course, grown dusty in disuse as the doors of the X-Mansion seemed to shut tighter each year, but every real meal was taken around the breakfast table. It was rarely abandoned save at times like these, three am war tribunals.

Fifteen minutes later he had settled the small yet disturbing posse around the smaller round table and distributed coffee and a small bowl of sugar, which was promptly dumped straight into the teenage boy’s mouth. Cable was still hovering around the fridge, pacing slightly but too incapable of showing emotion to make a big deal out of it. Scott had to glare Cable into submission to somehow get some semblance of a coherent conversation out of them. The full story, painstakingly extracted from the two bored women, the two men who did not seem to have a complete grasp of the english language, and a universal empty eyed stare of dead exhaustion, seemed to be this:

“Cable, Wade, Ellie and I were fucking around and we found these two guys.” The woman, whose named seemed to be Domino, jerked a thumb at the two blond men. “Longshot, that’s the pretty one, and Shatterstar, that’s the smaller one. We rescued them and we can’t stick them in Wade’s apartment. Cable said that here would be okay.” She made little jazz-hands. “Tah dah.”

“That,” Scott said. “explained nothing.”

Shatterstar was twitching, hand stretching as if reaching for Longshot’s sleeve before retreating and thinking better of it. Ellie was keeping a close eye on him, but seemed to be pretending she wasn’t. “Where even are we? Cable said this would be safe.”

“It is safe,” Cable said reassuringly, “this is the X-Mansion. You saw that security system, nothing can get past it.”

He carefully didn’t mention the million times the mansion had been attacked, which had been very stressful for Scott and wouldn’t have done much good for the twitchy boy anyway. “Nothing can get past him,” Shatterstar said, shaking his head. “Not anything. Nothing. He is going to find us.”

“He’s not going to find us.” Longshot carefully reached over and placed Shatterstar’s hand on the table, calming its twitching. He turned to Scott for the first time, grimacing slightly, and he was struck again with how handsome the man could have been. “I am sorry. Shatterstar is very resilient, he will be better in the morning. You need not worry about us.”

He was anyway, but seeing as it was his job Scott couldn’t bring himself to mind. “Are you two brothers?”

The table looked around at each other.

Eventually Cable said, “That’s a surprisingly difficult question.”

“You really don’t want to know,” said Domino.

Ellie made a ‘kinda-sorta’ gesture with her hand, still sipping the juice box.

“Am I ever going to get a straight answer out of you all?” Scott asked, exasperated. “Nathan, I’ve been respecting your privacy for a long time, but if something is after these people I have the right to know if I need to worry about it.”

The table looked at each other again.

“I...cannot say nothing will be after them,” Cable said haltingly. “But I can promise it won’t hurt the team.”

Domino turned to him, looking faintly annoyed. “You can’t promise that.”

“I can promise I won’t let it.”

“You know he’s going to send people after them - “

“And I can promise I can deal with them,” Cable said firmly. “The rebellion has been successful, Domino. Mojo has fallen. This is merely...witness protection.”

“Witness protection is for people who still have the mafia after them.”

“I’m sorry, I still do not understand these quaint modern idioms,” Cable said blithely. “Nobody knows they’re here. We’re going to track down his hunt and recovery team, we are going to kill them painfully yet very quickly, and we are going to return to Mojoland and let Wade finish that scalp collection he’s been working on. Then we can put these two,” he gestured to Longshot and Shatterstar, who looked fairly peeved, “back where we found them and go back to what we were doing.” He paused. “Without the hookers this time.”

Ellie’s juice box ran out. She popped it out of her mouth. “I liked the hookers.”

“Without the hookers. And Cyclops and the X-Men,” he turned to face Scott, “will be perfectly safe.”

There was no such thing as perfectly safe. Cable would know Scott would never buy that, but they had an unspoken agreement that when Cable danced, obfuscated, evaded, and flat out lied Scott would get the hint and back off. He lied frequently, well, and with abandon. But Scott understood that as a time traveller there were some things Cable just couldn’t tell him, and they had a trust that he would never hold back anything that would hurt Scott. He had never kept something back for no reason. And despite all of this, despite every flashing red arrow against the conclusion, Scott trusted Cable with his life, trusted him beyond what was conventional or reasonable. Scott trusted Cable to lie.

He was lying now. This was either very, very important, or very, very big trouble. Knowing his luck, it was probably both.

Scott trusted Cable with his own life. Cable, who he knew practically nothing about. Cable, apparently a genetically engineered super soldier from the future who had been sent back in time by a Mr. Sinister, a name that he had definitely made up, to fight that evil Apocalypse guy, an enemy the X-Men had defeated years ago and who Scott had kind of forgotten about until Cable mentioned it. Scott still had no idea why Cable had decided to give him a backstory that was so obviously fake but he decided that he would tell him when he was ready.

Scott hadn’t really known that he had been assembling a little superteam and fighting crime with a pasty woman in a jumpsuit, a very unimpressed teenage girl, and Deadpool, but he had the feeling he severely did not want to know what they all got up to in their free time. “I really, really need more information than all of that,” Scott said. “If this involves anything less than a dimension warping time paradox I need to know about it. At least what to watch for if something storms my house, Nathan!”

“Why can’t you trust me to keep you safe?” Cable snapped. “I said I wouldn’t let anything get into your house.”

“Believe it or not, there’s a lot of other places I would like to stay safe from whatever it is has you so scared.”

“Domino and I have been covering a lot more than you know these past couple of months and you never needed to know about those either.”

“There’s a difference between need to know and like to know, Nathan.” Scott’s voice had begun to waver. “I would like to know if you’re putting yourself in ridiculous danger that I could help you with if you actually let me in the loop.”

“You have enough on your plate without worrying about something that’s not your responsibility -”

“You’re my responsibility!”

Scott didn’t realize he had shouted until Shatterstar had slunk down lower in his seat and Domino and Longshot made frantic shushing noises. Cable looked as if he had been slapped.

It was probably one of the stronger facial expressions he had seen Cable make. Scott forced his breathing down, brought his voice closer to steadiness. “You are an X-Man and I like to think that you’re my friend. You can’t keep on like this, doing whatever you want and expecting us to hope that you aren’t blowing up military bases _again_.”

Cable half-rose from his seat, eyebrow ticking downwards. “I am an adult, and I can and will do whatever I want -”

“Your actions have repercussions for all of us!”

“I’m not Rachel, you can’t treat me like this!”

“You’re not as different from Rachel as you think - “

“I’m older than you!”

“And at least Rachel knows to at least tell me when she’s blowing up military bases -”

“Wow,” Domino said, head propped up in her hands, looking incredibly amused. “I guess you weren’t lying when you said he was your - “

“One more word out of you, Domino,” Cable grit out, “and I’m telling Wade the code to your apartment complex.”

The interruption gave Scott the space to calm down. He didn’t know why he was so upset. He trusted Cable, of course he did. It was just that -

“Why don’t you trust me?”

The small group’s attention snapped to Scott again, and Cable’s posture instantly relaxed. Scott was still having difficulty reading his face, feelings like absolute fury conveyed in the tick of an eyebrow, but he could tell that the man looked almost sad.

“I do. Really, I do. Some things I don’t want to burden you with, Scott.” He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly looking a lot smaller. “You have enough already.”

“You do seem like a bit of a micromanager,” Longshot offered, probably thinking he was being helpful. “I do not understand why we have to report our movements to you.”

“Oh, just knowing you have movements at all would be nice,” Scott said frostily. “What is it this time? An apocalypse? SHIELD is secretly Hydra? Captain America is secretly Hydra? Anything would be good.”

The actual full story, apologetically explained to Scott over cooling cups of coffee with the understanding that some things had to be edited out, was this:

Somewhere out there, in one of the millions of decomposing universes that all seemed a lot worse than theirs, lived an alien tyrant named Mojo. He would create slaves to fight in gladiatorial death matches like something out of _300_ , only with actual people instead of well-oiled actors. People who he used to beat to death when they didn’t do what he wanted. Apparently a lot of people were really sick of this, Longshot included, and tried to overthrow him. It wouldn’t have gone so well if it wasn’t for Cable, Domino, and Wade, who were there for reasons that Scott apparently was not allowed to know. They helped out Longshot and Shatterstar, who apparently also was also a genetically modified super soldier made for killing like everybody else in this freaking story, and when things started heating up Longshot helped them make a hasty retreat into Scott’s dimension and time. Ellie, apparently, had spent this whole time sulking in their favorite bar and hustling mercenaries because the others wouldn’t let her go into the despotic dystopian planet dimension.

“They’re going to send people after us,” Cable finally said, “and we don’t know how long Mojo is going to stay down. We can handle them, but we aren’t sure if Longshot and Shatterstar are going to be able to make it back to their home dimension or if it’s even safe. We’re all going to be fighting constantly against whatever remnants of Mojo’s forces can make it through. The rebellion should be able to handle most of the rank and file, but the four ringleaders and Mojo are going to be a little more difficult.” He paused before hesitantly saying, “Of course, these rank and file cannot travel dimensions, but if they hypothetically could then they would definitely come in swarms after Longshot and Shatterstar.”

Scott took another look around the table. Domino and Ellie both looked tired, thick rings around their eyes and slight scorch marks on their jumpsuits. Longshot and Shatterstar weren’t emancipated, didn’t look starved or even that much worse for wear. But there was something behind their eyes that creeped Scott out. Then again, he supposed he had never seen slaves on the run from their master before. Maybe they all looked like that.

“And you all want a place to hide from Mojo?”

Longshot shook his head. “We will fight. I made that decision a year ago when I decided to rebel and I have been making it since. I got my friends into this mess, and I must help them get us out.” He clapped Shatterstar on the shoulder, who suddenly looked wary. “I am begging you, please keep Gaveedra safe. I would not have him in danger again.”

Shatterstar - Gaveedra, jumped out of his chair, letting it clatter onto the ground and batting Longshot’s hand away. “What the fuck, you can’t stick me here! I’m not going to abandon you - “

“You can and you will,” Longshot said firmly. “You’ve fought long enough, it is time to let us handle things now.”

“I’ll handle things when Mojo is dead and I have pissed on his grave!” Gaveedra seemed to be working himself up, but the hollow look in his eyes only strengthened. “Are you planning on dying on me too? Like fucking everyone else?”

Longshot looked pained. “Gaveedra, please.”

“I can’t lose you too!”

Scott felt as if he was watching something intensely private. Domino and Cable seemed to have the same thought, as they all turned to look at each other and pretended not to hear. They looked more saddened then surprised. Scott wondered how many other times they had seen this scene play out in their strange little rebellion against a distant enemy, how many families struggled not to be torn apart. He wondered if it had ever ended well.

“You heard Cable. We can handle it, yes? And every enemy will be kept from the X-Mansion.” Longshot was still smiling, his hollow eyes never once leaving Gaveedra. Ellie was chewing wide eyed on her plastic straw. “This anal retentive young man commands the most powerful army in this world, or so Cable says. He can protect you like I can’t.”

“I don’t need protection!” Something raw flitted against Gaveedra’s face. “Who’s going to protect you, if not me? I can fight, all we’re good for is fighting, you can’t take this from me.”

“I know you can fight,” Longshot said. “All we do is fight, yes? Never any choice. I am making the choice to protect you. I want you to be able to choose for once, Shatterstar. If we make it through this, if we can escape to this dimension and hide here - you may choose anything you want, be anyone you want to be.”

Gaveedra looked crushed, and his face fit the look so well it was as if it was the only emotion he had ever worn. Maybe it was. “I want to be with you.”

Longshot stood up, and as if on cue Cable and Domino sent their chairs scraping on the linoleum tile to rise too. Ellie began to stand up before Domino held out a hand, shaking her head slightly.

“Ellie, I want you to stay here too.”

The teenager looked outraged. “What the hell?”

“Not now,” Cable said, looking incredibly tired. Longshot was checking each of his weapon holders, Gaveedra looking lost. “Time’s running out, we have to go. No more time for arguing, Shatterstar.”

“But - “

“That’s an order.” Longshot’s severe tone was broken by his bright, sad smile. “Your last one, I should hope. Be good for Cyclops, will you?”

Ellie was slowly lowering herself back into her seat, eyes wide. Gaveedra looked strongly as if he did not know if he wanted to say something sarcastic or cry.

“Please come back,” he whispered, “please.”

Longshot dredged up a cocky smile from somewhere, flipping his hair in a parody of a L’Oreal commercial. “That’s what all the women say.” He clapped Cable on the back. “Let’s be off! Our war isn’t going to wait all night.”

“If only,” Domino snorted. She looked back at Ellie, eyes creasing in what could have almost been a smile. “Don’t burn the house down, Negasonic Teenage Warhead. We’re counting on you.”

Ellie saluted sarcastically, still looking strangely lost.

They didn’t leave very dramatically, but from the look on Gaveedra and Ellie’s faces they might as well have walked off the face of the earth. When you’re a kid, Scott thought, you understand that the people around you are meant to keep you safe. It’s just hard to understand when it’s a different kind of safe: the kind of safe that leaves you behind instead of standing in front of you. As an adult Scott knows that no adult wants to leave from their position right in front of you and guarding you, fending off everything that could make things hard, things that can worry you or cause pain. Everyone has to step away sometime, release that white knuckled grip on their child’s hand and let them sprint ahead, but they should know you’re coming back. They shouldn’t see your back as you walk away.  And Scott knew only too well that it was safe only if they knew that you were coming back.  

Scott clapped both of them on the shoulder, steering them gently towards the stairs.

“Come on,” he said, “things will be better in the morning.”

  
  


Things were not better in the morning.

Jean Paul had been so busy bragging to a very uncaring Xi’an about his top score in Madden that he had almost missed the exhausted teenager slumped in his usual chair at the breakfast table, half-heartedly shoving fruit into his mouth. Scott, leaning against one of the breakfast counters and quietly writing on a memo pad, quickly made a note to take him to one of their mutant-friendly doctors. Of course, they had absolutely no idea as to his baseline, but he probably needed some kind of dietary plan.

It was probably a testament to his need of a dietary plan that he was still shoving bananas down his mouth at eleven am still half asleep and bone tired with exhaustion. Scott had no idea how long either of them had been up: when he knocked on Ellie’s door a little while ago she had opened it only enough to say that she was sleeping however long she wanted, reminding him nostalgically of Rogue in high school. Gaveedra himself had only woken up twenty minutes ago. Most of the house had already drifted in and out of breakfast already, as it was a relatively informal affair on the weekends, and most of them had scattered to do homework, talk to friends, or play Smash Bros. Amara, unfortunately, was still setting scraps of paper on fire for fun, experimenting with the fun new trial period of the ‘I don’t have to listen to Scott anymore now that I’m An Adult’ game. Many of her peers, much less well behaved than her, had already entered that period and quickly left once they realized the futility. Scott gave her a couple of weeks.

Hisako technically was the one who noticed him first, but she seemed to be busy toting a bright pink binder of homework through the kitchen. She had carefully scrutinized the slumped figure before turning to Scott, who nodded briskly. She shrugged and went back to her homework. Scott loved getting them young, they were so adaptable.

“And honestly, I should be redefining the concept of midair - get out of my chair, dude!”

Gaveedra didn’t move or acknowledge him, chewing blearily on a strawberry leaf.

Jean Paul turned to Scott, still outraged about the theft of his chair and assuming Scott would back him up on it. To be fair, things like personal space or private possessions were held extremely seriously in the manor, as anything otherwise would incite constant chaos and jockeying for premium breakfast spots. A space and place for everyone had been laboriously scraped out: a cereal, a towel, a favorite indentation on the couch. New arrivals were given a small pamphlet on what they could and could not touch organized by Dani, who was sick of people touching her stuff.

Scott sighed, making a brief note on his memo pad about printing out another two of those. “Get another chair for today, Jean.”

Xi’an made ‘ooooh’ing noises as Jean’s face got progressively redder. “That’s not what you said when I used Rahne’s Wii Remote!”

“Then this is your justice. Leave him alone.”

Xi’an prodded the new figure, looking surprised when she found nothing but hard muscle. “His brain’s really new,” she said, further cementing her reputation as the supervillain in training with her vaguely amoral supervillain powers, “where did you find him? It looks all...gross.”

“I hope you aren’t reading the mind of someone you haven’t met yet, Xi’an.”

Xi’an threw her arms in the air, terrified. “I would never! I was just getting an imprint off him.  It’s really strong, it’s so freaky.”

“Is this guy even awake?” Jean poked at his ribs again, harder this time. “Hey buddy, wake the hell up, that’s my favorite chair.”

With a motion so fast Scott didn’t even see it move, Gaveedra’s hand shot out from where it hung at his side and clenched around Jean’s wrist. Jean screamed, Xi’an jumping away in fear, and for a brief moment Scott thought he could almost hear a snapping sound as Jean’s wrist was broken in two, ripped from his hand.

He had been imagining it. Gaveedra released Jean’s hand, who was still cursing wildly, and watched blearily as a good half dozen mutants poured into the kitchen. Every eye was on Gaveedra, shock and suspicion lingering in both, and Scott was up and had made his way to the boy’s shoulder before he could think.

“That’s enough, you two,” he said severely. “Everyone can just power down now.”

The small crowd reluctantly did so, with an audible ‘aw’ of disappointment from Bobby. Jean Paul was still cursing, rubbing at his bruised wrist. “What the hell, man, I need that thing! What’s your damage?”

You had no idea. Scott pushed gently at Jean’s shoulder, letting Xi’an grab him by the arm and tow him away. The small crowd, which Scott could now tell consisted of Rahne, Dani, Sam, Jubilee, Hisako, and Bobby, reluctantly stood down. It was a large crowd just for the living room - there must have been another Smash Bros tournament.

Well, now was as good of a time as any. “Gaveedra, why don’t you go get some more sleep, yeah? You seem to have been up for a while.”

He had been sleeping for a while too, but Scott had the feeling it hadn’t been very well. Gaveedra looked almost awake now as he stood up from the table, one hand clenched in a fist as the other drifted to his waistband searching for a weapon that was not there. “I’m not tired.”

“Could have fooled me,” Scott continued blithely. “Go take one of those bushels of bananas - that’s that yellow thing you’re eating right now - and see if you can take a nap or something.”

Gaveedra didn’t move.

“I’ll tell you if I hear anything, Shatterstar.”

He tore his eyes away from the crowd, scowling fiercely, before shoving one of the bushels of bananas under his armpit and dashing back up the stairs. The small crowd watched him go, not bothering to hide their gaping.

“Right,” Scott said briskly, clapping his hands, “family meeting.”

Family meetings were different than debriefings. Debriefings were held in the subterranean meeting room next door to Cerebro, practically opening into their not inconsiderable armory and the other supercomputer, the one that actually had all of their databases and records. The other one typically took place in the non-living living room, and was the one most were actually scared of. Debriefings, for example, were usually to explain the process and logistics of a large scale mission involving one or more of the mobilized teams and were probably not anyone’s fault or sin. Family meetings were called when someone had committed an unforgivable crime, a small group of people had committed an unforgivable crime, somebody had accidentally fucked off to space and it might be awhile before they sauntered back, or if Xavier was home. Aside from these cases, most of the time they were assembled right before someone new was introduced into the home, which was a relatively happy occasion save for when you realized you had to painstakingly draw up a new brochure for Who Got What, or when there had been a new terrorist bombing against mutants, which was usually met with a sad and abject silence.

Scott had called Excalibur about five times before he got a response, a slightly frantic action that everyone had seen and was now implanting a seed of panic and worry into every heart. He didn’t call Kitty’s group back home unless it was important.

When a bleary voice finally picked up the phone Scott finally began to wonder what time it was over there, before deciding it wasn’t actually that important. “Fucking fuck Scott, why fucking - “

“Ilyana, please give the phone to Kurt,” Scott said firmly, drowning out the half-hearted cursing which was quickly slurring into what was quite possibly an ancient demonic language. The small assembly perched on, in front of, around, and in the general area of the two couches leaned forward intently.

There was a familiar shuffle and thump of a phone being carried upstairs, along with familiar shouts in Russian. Finally the phone screeched again and resolved into a clear reception of Kurt’s, also very sleepy, voice. “Mein gott, I hope this is important.”

“How quickly can you and Rachel be here?”

Every trace of exhaustion was gone. “Five minutes. How bad?”

“Nobody’s dying, probably. Tell Rachel it’s Cable, a future problem - tell her Mojo.”

“Mow-jee-oh?”

“No, like in the Powerpuff girls. Mojo. Please go get Rachel and get over here.”

He snapped the phone shut, uncomfortably aware he had now attracted the undivided attention of twelve eager faces. He counted them up quickly - Tabby was still with Nextwave, disturbingly enough, and Ray was currently attending college at University of Toronto with Alpha Flight. He was actually pretty lucky to have such a large turnout - since the New Mutants had more or less shuffled off to college it had been hard to get them all in the same place. It being Saturday helped, but most of them deciding to stay here instead of in dorms to help on X-Men missions helped too. Erik, the only one of the adults currently in the house, leaned against the doorframe, frowning slightly. Julio was leaning against a bookcase in the back of the room, looking leery.

Scott didn’t blame him, seeing as this was probably his first family meeting. He had only unpacked his bags a month or so ago, still a wary seventeen year old who never seemed to call his parents. He was the first name in a growing list that Scott was carefully compiling: mutants too strong to be left alone, whose parents would soon grow to hate them. He had already been talking with Sean Cassidy more and more, who was growing worried for his daughter, and the list had steadily begun growing. He was hesitant to place him on X-Force, despite the age similarity. Maybe he was the beginning of a new wave. Maybe.

At any rate, when it was combined with his tenuous position and temporarily aloof personality Scott had been keeping an eye on him. He looked nothing but wary now, trying hard to look uncaring but still leaning as unconsciously forward as everyone else. ‘

Scott coughed, clapping his hands together. “Is everyone here?”

Right on cue, Ruth wandered in, eating a banana. “No please.”

Seeing as Gaveedra had taken every banana in the kitchen before he fled upstairs, it probably wasn’t worth it to wonder too hard about where she had gotten it from. The girl shambled her way easily to Julio and promptly started leaning against his leg, eating her banana with a serene grace models envied.

“Well, seeing as how everyone’s actually here now - Jamie, is that you or a dupe?”

The Jamie looked shifty. “Does it actually matter - “

“Jamie.”

The dupe sighed, poofing itself and making Rahne overbalance onto the sofa. A minute later Jamie walked in, still nursing a cup of coffee and muttering darkly, and shifted into the empty space next to a very peeved off Rahne.

“If everyone’s actually here now, we can start.” Scott glanced at his watch - factoring in the time for Kurt and Rachel to find each other and get dressed, they would be walking in almost any minute. “We have two new kids staying here for the time being. I need everyone to be very hospitable to them for right now.”

They all stared back at him, unimpressed.

“That’s not what you said on the phone to Kurt,” Dani accused. “Who’s Mojo?”

Scott glanced over quickly at Erik, who looked equally as clueless as he was. Damn. “Look, I just wanted to start with the most important thing.”

“Whatever’s dragging Kurt and Rachel back from England isn’t the most important thing?” Sam asked. “It sounds pretty important.”

“Okay,” Scott amended, “Maybe the easiest thing.”

Jubilee raised a hand, then didn’t bother to be called on. “If this is a conversation that we need to be having in the debriefing room, I want you to know that I’m resentful that you panicked all of us with the words family meeting.”

“I have no idea why the idea of a family meeting is more terrifying than a superhero mission briefing,” Scott said flatly. “And I would appreciate it if everyone would stop interrupting.”

“I won’t interrupt if you’re telling us about Mojo,” Bobby said.

Maybe this was why Cable didn’t like to tell him things. “If everybody doesn’t stop asking about Mojo and let me talk, then maybe we can - “

The unnecessarily fancy doors to the not-living living room burst open, a panting and wild-haired Rachel running into the room and straight into the undivided attention of the whole house. Kurt was right on her heels, looking just as panicked but more as if he had no idea why.

“What,” Rachel said, still gasping for breath, “was the fuck about Mojo?”

Scott groaned.

Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. He should have debriefed Rachel and Erik first, then went ahead and explained the highly edited version of things to the others. But Scott almost never hid things from the team, even the scary things, even the things that would have helped them sleep better at night. They had to be able to make an informed decision about their lives that they put on the line every day. He wasn’t their father, he couldn’t fix the world so that it never hurt them. He wasn’t even sure if what he did passed for protecting them.

It killed him to see teenager after teenager put on their first uniform, to see the incredible gleam of joy in their eyes. They shouldn’t have to be so happy just to fight back. Scott had been ecstatic, had been jumping at the bit for the slightest glimpse of control over their hate, over his life. Every day in that hospital bed he had to listen to the doctors talk over his head about releasing him because he was too dangerous, a ticking time bomb. He hadn’t even been able to open his eyes before Xavier rescued him.

He thought involuntarily of Cable, who he was far too late to protect. It seemed as if that was the case of everybody he cared about.

Jamie was leaning forward in his seat, fingers held in front of his lips, gaze darting back and forth between Scott and Rachel. He had grown up too smart.

“I need you to sit down and listen to me, Rachel,” Scott said eventually. He hadn’t gotten any sleep last night, and was too tired for this. “And I need everyone to pay very close attention.”

Finally, twenty eyes turned to him and asked silently for answers. He wished he had more to give this time.

“We have two more people sleeping upstairs. One of them’s named Ellie, codenamed Negasonic Teenage Warhead. I don’t know what her mutation is, or really that much about her. She’s a friend of Cable’s. Cable and some other friends of his asked me if she could stay here while they sorted out a dangerous situation. A dangerous situation that we have nothing to do with,” Scott met the eyes of every single person in the room, his gaze intent, “and that I don’t want anybody here involving themselves with until I say so. Cable and his team are dealing with it.”

He took a deep breath.

“Cable, a woman named Domino, Ellie, and Wade Wilson, whom some of you have never met and if you are lucky never will, got themselves involved in some drama in another dimension.” He held up a hand before the chatter could burst out. “Yes, another dimension, calm down. One of the people from that alternate dimension is hopefully getting some sleep right now. Gaveedra, codenamed Shatterstar, I don’t know his mutation, is staying with us for his protection. Some people are after him. I don’t have any more information than that, but hopefully I’ll know it when I see it. We’re putting the mansion on lockdown.”

He put his hand up again, and made cold eye contact with the room again. They were too well trained to actually interrupt this time, thank god, and too well trained to look scared. “Nobody in or out. We’re cutting off signal again too. I’m going to see if I can call Logan, Storm, and Hank back in, but if they can’t then they can’t. Somebody named Mojo, some kind of planetary tyrant, owned Gaveedra and his...brother, and are trying to get him back.”

He saw the double take at the word ‘owned’, and he grimaced.

“Gaveedra is from a different dimension, time, and probably has never been a free man before. Slavery is a very big deal and we’re working really hard to make sure that doesn’t happen again. If all goes well then hopefully we can say goodbye and maybe visit him, but if it doesn’t go well he and Ellie may have to stay longer. I need everyone to work with me here. You know lockdown protocols, and you know I expect you to follow them. Try to leave Gaveedra alone and anybody whose name rhymes with Ron Paul should try really hard not to antagonize him.” He clapped his hands. “Okay, any questions?”

There were a lot of questions.

Rachel, selectively oblivious to the high quantity of raised hands, stalked up to the front with Scott, expression serene and confident. It was terrifying, as a calm Rachel was a Rachel who was lying so blatantly she didn’t even care if you knew it.

“Okay, kiddos,” she said, propping her hands on her hips. “I’m going to answer all of the little questions you have right now. You don’t have anything to do with this. Your job is to fry any nasties showing up looking for Shatterstar - what kind of name is Gaveedra? What is he right now, like twelve? Christ.”

“He looked sixteen or seventeen, Rachel.”

“Christ, that’s amazing. Anyway, kid is one of the top gladiator warriors from his horrible dimension and really hardcore. He’s going to be with me.” She shot a hard look to the group. “I can’t promise you that you’re not going to all get dragged into this. That is kind of your job. You’re X-Men, New Mutants, and X-Force. You have a job to do, so do it. Mooks from evil dimension show up on our doorstep, you kill it. Do not leave this mansion unless something is tearing down the walls. Either that idiot Cable comes back and tells us we’re in the all clear or we’re getting attacked, either one. Don’t be morons about this, be X-Men. Now go away.”

They went away.

Rachel closed the door behind them, locking it and jiggling the door handle to make sure it took. She whirled around to the three people remaining in the room - Scott, Erik, and Jamie - and quickly scrubbed her face in her hands. She looked, Scott noted, a lot more worn out than he had noticed at first.

“Mojo,” she breathed out into her hands. “You got Spyral lurking behind the shrubbery, Scott? Mr. Sinister playing Go Fish with Gambit?”

“If those are evil future supervillain names they’re kind of stupid,” Jamie said blandly. “Everyone knows Gambit cheats at card games anyway.”

“Gambit cheats at everything, surprisingly enough.” Rachel turned back to Scott. “What exactly did Cable tell you? I’m shocked he told you anything, I know how much of a human disaster he is.”

Choosing to ignore the fact that she was probably the only person alive who had the balls to call Cable a human disaster and the far more disturbing thought that Scott actually agreed with her, he settled for saying, “Only as much as I could drag out of him. Nathan and Longshot were swearing up and down that they could take care of everything but Domino didn’t seem so sure. They wouldn’t have risked trying to hide him with us if they didn’t think that he seriously needed to be hidden, though - we’re kind of the first place anyone would look for a temporally and dimensionally displaced mutant.”

Erik’s eyebrows shot up. “Domino was with them?”

Scott turned to him, unsurprised that he knew her. Erik had tried to murder a lot of people. “Apparently her and Cable had been friends for a while. You didn’t know anything about this, did you?”

The older man shook his head slowly, looking contemplative. “Domino’s a mercenary, a mutant with luck-based powers and the expertise of a top SHIELD agent. She’s very good. It would be annoying for me to kill her but very far from impossible.”

Erik tended to rank everyone he met on terms of ‘how easy would it be for me to kill them’, an unsettling habit that Scott was waiting with bated breath for him to break. According to him, the coveted ‘Very very very hard for me to kill’ slots, as his pride wouldn’t allow him to say that anyone was impossible for him to kill, consisted of Apocalypse, Wolverine, and Jean.

“Longshot’s a genetically engineered gladiator and a prized slave of Mojo,” Rachel added. “Shatterstar too, except he’s some kind of clone of Longshot with different powers. Longshot has luck based powers and Shatterstar can create portals, but both of their mutations basically boil down to ‘I fight good’. They were both good friends of mine before…” Rachel looked down and bit her lip. “Before.”

“Before you came back in time?” Jamie added helpfully.

Rachel shook her head and didn’t say anything more.

Tactfully changing the subject, Erik asked Scott what exactly Cable and the others had said and Scott attempted to tell him everything he knew. Depressingly, when all said out loud it really didn’t seem like much. Erik, for example, was still confused. Or as confused as Erik got about anything.

“They can’t be planning on overthrowing the tyrant king of an entire dimension.”

“It’s Cable.”

“True.” Erik paused. “Bounty hunters sent after Longshot and Shatterstar, meant to be intercepted by you. Contributing their services to the rebellion, intending on killing Mojo and overthrowing his strange sense of government. Rachel, how difficult would he be to kill?”

“He kind of looks like an overgrown Jabba the Hutt,” Rachel volunteered, “so not very. But I’ve seen him brainwash people, make them forget their own lives, more than once. And he’s very good at capturing people. When I escaped, he…”

She trailed off, looking lost again. Scott squeezed her on the shoulder, but she quickly schooled her face into something resembling her usual haughty expression. “I’m going to run off and rescue his ass,” she decided. “Erik, you and the X-Men are with me. Scott, if I know him well enough those bounty hunters are going to be coming and for prizes like Longshot and Shatterstar, so there’s going to be a lot of them. He has this whole bounty hunter TV show, Ferret the Bounty Hunter, it’s really hilarious. The kids need training anyway, this’ll be good practice.”

“I do not like that idea of practice at all, whatsoever - “

“Why were you talking like you were expecting him to stay?” Jamie asked, cutting Scott off. “You aren’t acting like it’s going to be a week or so, Scott, you’re really in this one. Do you think they’re not going to come back?”

“Of course,” Scott said reflexively. “It’s Nathan, he can do anything.”

Rachel had a small gleam in her eye, and she ducked her head again to hide it. Apparently Scott was having all sorts of confusing feelings about Cable today. “ But Longshot didn’t seem optimistic. A world is a big place for one man to liberate, Jamie. They talked about hiding here for good, but I don’t know how they would even do that. How can you hide from someone who can travel across time and space to find you?”

There was a pregnant silence, tainted by Rachel and Erik’s drawn expressions. Jamie kept quiet too, clearly thinking harder, until he exhaled softly.

“I don’t know if he’s the kind of guy to cut his losses,” Jamie said slowly, “but if he knows nearly as much about our dimension as it looks like he does then he knows that the X-Men are more than capable of defending ourselves. If he could have taken us he would have done so the minute Cable and Domino found him, invaded Earth and turned it into a reality TV show or something. If we let him know he can’t win against the X-Men then any rational king wouldn’t risk his resources over two slaves.”

Erik arched an eyebrow. “And we’re certain the X-Men can hold their own against a pocket dimension?”

Jame grinned. “Hey, has anything held their own against us yet?”

Mojo living or dying: either way, with the X-Men Gaveedra would be safe. Longshot and Cable knew that. Scott also knew from firsthand experience that Cable was infamously hard to kill. It was a mess, put together by half truths and suppositions, but in the end Rachel’s plan seemed the best. Rachel, Erik, and if possible Storm and Logan to Mojoworld, Scott and the kids to the bounty hunters.

Probably.

The small group quickly broke - Rachel and Erik to grab Logan and Ororo, Jamie to start setting up lockdown protocols. Scott was briefly wondering how Rachel was even planning to get there when he heard a faint thumping sound from behind the door. He and Erik traded glances.

Sure enough, after Scott carefully walked over and when Erik made sure to loudly ask Rachel how exactly she was planning to cross dimensions (Forge, probably), he opened the door to find Julio crouched behind it, ear pressed up against the wood. He almost overbalanced onto the thick carpet, catching himself only to find Scott standing in front of him, arms crossed.

“I’m going to be honest,” Scott said, “I was kind of expecting Bobby.”

Julio jumped up, scowling heavily. It was probably lucky that he had only been here for a month or so - any longer and he would have been quailing at the patented Scott Stare. It wasn’t that scary at first. At first. “What were you expecting? You barely even told us anything!” He crossed his arms, an unconscious mimicry of Scott. “Are we being attacked?”

This wasn’t a very good introduction to the X-Men, but it was an expected one. Poor kid had probably never fought for his life before. Scott sighed, releasing his anger and gently steering Julio away from the room where a snickering Erik was exiting. Tea would probably fix this, as much as anything could.

“Believe it or not, this happens quite a bit.”

“Extradimensional bounty hunters looking for genetically engineered gladiator slaves?”

“Tragically, yes.”

Julio rolled his eyes. “Come to the X-Men, they said. You don’t have to burden your grandmother with your presence anymore, they said. Leave me alone, my grandmother said. Now I’m stuck _here_ ,” He pointed dramatically to the ground, then pointed outside the window, “while things out _there_ are trying to kill me! I just got here, I don’t even have a superhero name yet. And I don’t even want a superhero name if it means that there are monsters beating down my door trying to kill me!”

The smaller table was still cluttered with untouched cold coffee cups, but Scott gently guided Julio back into the kitchen there anyway. Ellie’s juicebox was even still there. “Look, I wish this wasn’t happening too. I wasn’t exactly happy about Cable dropping this on our doorstep and endangering the team. But Julio, we’re all going to be in danger anyway. Mutants are constantly in danger from those who would hurt us or like to see us dead. I don’t have to remind you of that.” The teenager looked down at his hands. He had been having a rough time when the X-Men recruited him - not as much as some, but worse than a few. “And sometimes mutants are the ones who are putting other people in danger. Whenever a mutant hurts other people, that puts our entire community at risk. It only takes one mutant attacking an elementary school to make them ban mutants from elementary schools. Sometimes you have to fight some to protect others, Professor Xavier knew that. There are good people, good X-Men who are in a lot of danger right now and we’re trying to help our friends.”

“What if I don’t want to fight?”

“Then of course you don’t have to,” Scott said firmly. “Hisako and Ruth are going to be in the Danger Room and I would love to have somebody older in there with them to protect them. I managed to wrangle Hisako in there under the pretense that she was protecting Ruth, but she’s only twelve and as much as he would like you to think differently Jamie was kept out of the field at that age too. Of course, I’m pretty sure his latent mutation is being a trouble magnet, but that couldn’t be helped.”

Julio looked at him dubiously, probably catching that two people were put in there under the pretense of protecting somebody younger than them. He meant what he said, though: Hisako had a strong mutation like everyone else in the house, but twelve year olds are notoriously bad at fighting crime.

“Still, I don’t know if - “ Rictor cut off abruptly. “Someone’s coming down the stairs.”

He hadn’t even been looking at the stairs, and when Scott turned he couldn’t see anything. Sensing vibrations in the earth, then - God, that’ll be so useful. Scott had fairly good night vision, a side effect of the glasses, but he didn’t see the figure blurred into the shadows until Gaveedra stepped into view and jumped down the remaining stairs. He didn’t make any sound jumping down the stairs either, and Scott began to grow increasingly curious about his mutation.

Gaveedra, meanwhile, was scowling his face off. “Thanks a lot.”

The chair scraped against the linoleum as Julio half rose from it, eyes widening. Gaveedra had a double-take too, stepping back as Julio rose. Either they already knew each other or Scott really, really didn’t like where this was going.

Eventually Gaveedra recovered enough to say, “Glasses man, let me out. If Mojo’s men are after me then others shouldn’t have to fight my battles.”

“There’s no have to about it,” Scott said firmly. “Everyone’s only doing exactly what they want to do. We’re already sending reinforcements to help Cable and your...dad?”

“Close enough.” Gaveedra pointed to Julio, still scowling. “What about him?”

“Julio isn’t doing anything he doesn’t want to do either. He’s just new, he’s not used to this yet.”

“Oh great, thanks.”

Gaveedra looked interested for the first time. He stepped fully into the kitchen, and Scott noted absently that he looked different in the morning. Somehow, that different was even worse than he looked yesterday. The bags under his eyes were more prominent, and like Longshot his skin was pulled taut over a gaunt face “New? How long have you been here?” He turned to Scott. “What is your turnover rate?”

“My what rate?”

He waved a hand impatiently. “You know, how long do they live?”

Scott and Julio exchanged a glance. Eventually Julio said, “I think Scott’s the oldest, so he’s been here about eight years. He’s really old.”

Gaveedra looked suitably impressed. “I do not know many who survive eight years in war. This dimension must be very different.”

The list of things Scott wasn’t touching with a ten foot pole was growing longer and longer. “Gaveedra, this isn’t anywhere near the top of the list of the very long list of things we need to know about, but how good is your English?”

It was formal and stilted, with strange pauses between words, but otherwise his and Longshot’s grasp of the language was shockingly good. Exactly how long Cable had been working with them Scott didn’t know, but it couldn’t have been long enough to become fluent in an entire different language. Gaveedra only shrugged. “Cable gave us some workbooks.”

“Some workbooks?” Julio looked jealous. “It took me two years to learn English, jerk.”

“We were made with enhanced language acquisition,” Gaveedra said blandly. “As well as skill acquisition and a near perfect memory. I also have enhanced physical and mental attributes, as well as the ability to create shockwaves that I try not to use too often. And some other things.”

That was vague, which seemed to be a theme for the last couple of days. He would open up about it when he was ready, and it wasn’t as if Scott had the full idea on how anybody’s powers worked. There wasn’t exactly a manual for this kind of thing. Ruth, for example, still flat out refused to tell anyone exactly what she could do or exactly how blind she was. Blind enough that it got her out of doing chores, probably.  

Julio opened his mouth, probably to say something slightly insulting again, when Julio stiffened and held up a hand. A second later Gaveedra stiffened too, shifting his stance slightly in what Scott recognized as a very subtle battle stance. It was great how Scott was always the last one to know things.

Then an alarm blared, eliciting a hiss from Gaveedra, and metal shutters began rolling down over the windows. Distant thumps and clacks echoed through the walls: doors locking, reinforced metal activating and the buzzing, bee-like sound of ground security drones being deployed and the lasers activating. Both teenagers looked slightly terrified as Scott relaxed. “How fortified is this place?” Julio yelled, trying to drown out the sound of what sounded like a lot of lasers being activated. Gaveedra looked approving, which worried Scott slightly.

“Enough that Johnny Storm is discouraged from sneaking into Bobby’s room in the dead of night. Apparently not enough to keep out Peter Parker. Run along, you two. Go...hang out or whatever kids do these days. Gaveedra, if anything happens you’ll be the first to know. Take care of him.”

Julio looked slightly insulted as Gaveedra nodded. “One more thing,” Gaveedra said. “That is not my name.”

Awkward. “Sorry, I must have misheard Longshot. So what’s - “

“My name is Shatterstar,” he said. “Gaveedra was the name Longshot gave me several years after I was taken from my birthing tube. Before then I was only called Shatterstar. It is the name that hundreds of enemies breathed as they were dying, the name that Mojo cursed in the night as he searched long and hard for Longshot and I. Longshot wanted me to have something different.”

Julio frowned. “If people yelled that as they were, like, dying, then why would you want us to call you that -”

They didn’t have time for this. “Go upstairs, you two. Hang out or something. Julio, you haven’t even had the emergency protocol training yet, so stick with Shatterstar and keep him out of trouble. Shatterstar, stop him from dying. I have to go help the others.”

Shatterstar nodded again, grabbing Julio’s hand and towing him upstairs amidst his protests. At least there were two out of the way. Maybe Julio would help stop him from running out in the middle of the fight and trying to take on whoever was trying to kill them himself. Probably. Hopefully.

That was one problem more or less taken care of. Scott found another one as he was making his way to the basement where Jamie was undoubtedly still working on the emergency protocols and where the teams were supposed to be gathering. Hisako was clenching Ruth’s hand in the middle of one of the hallways, looking sullen and already suited up in her uniform. Ruth, content with having her hand clenched, was busy running her fingers through the hair of one of her Barbie dolls and humming quietly to herself.

The minute Hisako saw Scott her face grew even more murderous. “You have to let me help man the turrets.”

“I do not have to let you do that and I don’t really think we have any turrets. Why aren’t you in the danger room?”

Hisako knew full well that almost-teenagers didn’t stamp their foot but she looked strongly as if she wanted to. She was mentally doing it and they both knew it. “I can help, I’m practically invulnerable, and I got a perfect score on the Level 3 yesterday.”

“You have to be on Level 5 to help in danger situations.” Scott rapidly made up. “Again, why are you not in the danger room?”

“You let Jamie do all of this stuff!”

“Trust me, I did not,” Scott said darkly. He couldn’t believe Professor Xavier sometimes. “Unless you intend on letting Ruth sit by herself in the danger room, with no way of protecting herself if something breaks through, then you’re staying with her. You’re breaking rule number three, Hisako, and if you continue doing it then you’ll be benched until you’re fifteen. Go. Now.”

“I am adorable and helpless,” Ruth added helpfully. She squeezed the head of her Barbie.

Hisako’s expression was still thunderous, but she knew rule three. She ran off, Ruth waving goodbye to Scott. He waved goodbye weakly back, his heart giving him a sharp pang. He should have given her a hug. Ruth wouldn’t be scared, she could see the future. He couldn’t be there for her right now. That was what her siblings were for. He just didn’t know it would hurt so much.

She was eight, and didn’t even look scared. Did she know everything would be alright? Or did she trust Scott to protect her, to fulfill that future? She and Hisako would be in the danger room, the safest room in the manor. It was practically impenetrable, as necessitated by the worrying quantity of lasers and battering rams.

He didn’t know what he would do when Ruth was twelve and stamping her foot and demanding to be let out in the field. Ruth could be twenty with the ability to harden her astral projected form like Hisako could and he still wouldn’t let her. Worryingly, Ruth had hinted that she would be able to do just that. Scott felt useless.

The blue pants made of a thick protective weave, layered subtly with visible and invisible pockets. Yellow boots, gloves. A heavy blue jacket made out of kevlar, metal X crossing each side and two extra ‘X’s on each shoulder. Scott wondered where the Professor was. He had only seen him two or three times since Jean died. The last time Scott had been called to his study Xavier had explained that he had urgent business elsewhere, and that it might take a while. That had been almost a year ago. Hisako and Ruth had never even met him. He wondered if they would have liked him. Probably not Hisako.

He closed his eyes tight and traded his glasses for the visor.

  
  


So there had been a lot more bounty hunters than they were expecting.

Jamie chewed his lip, looking at the monitor as Scott leaned against the console. “I mean, considering the guy has his own pocket dimension, this shouldn’t really have been a surprise.”

“Yep,” Scott said woodenly.

Jamie looked up. “Are you sure you don’t want me to…?”

Scott took another glance at the screen.

One team flanking each end of the house. Kitty and Kurt were the only original X-Men actually on site, but seeing as both mutants had become frankly terrifying over the years they were helping hold the exits well. Xi’an had found the largest one and was using him to mow through the crowd, hopping bodies as each puppet was shot down by his own men. Flashes of fire and starbursts exploded in twin bangs, hazing the screen as the fire jumped from bounty hunter to bounty hunter. Jean Paul and Sam were flying overhead, picking off any goons who were trying to scale the roofs that the roof defense system couldn’t catch. Bobby and Dani had been setting up a defense perimeter for a while to match the three other defense perimeters, and here Scott was chewing on the ends of his glove.

Eventually Scott shook his head. “You’re making enough already. Do you know where the real Jamie is?”

“You know, the concept of reality is kind of a construct. I would say that so long as I exist as myself, real only comes down to - “ Jamie straightened, eyes briefly snapping out of focus. “Dupe - sorry, Alternative Jamie -  dispelled in the north foyer, Scott.”

“Great.” Scott thumbed his communicator on, glancing at the screen. “Rahne, north foyer. Call if you need backup.”

She growled an affirmative. Scott relaxed back against the console, still scanning the screens. Jamie was flipping switches and alternating security system cameras, probably trying to mentally establish a pattern. He slapped his hand on the console, eliciting another equally serious Jamie.

He rolled his chair slightly to the side so the other Jamie could get a better look. “Jamie, does it look to you like they’re aiming for the south side?”

“If I were them I’d avoid the pool, yeah.” The two Jamies exchanged another glance, expressions unreadable. “Look, see, they’re retreating from Amara here, but they’re trying to get around her there. Can you see the -”

“Yeah, of course. They’re trying to burn through Bobby’s -”

“Look, this one’s flying through -”

One of the Jamies flipped open a comm channel, quickly pressing a button on the console to switch it to Jean Paul’s. “You missed one on the south.”

Cursing fizzed from the comm before Jamie flicked it back off. He turned back to the other Jamie. “Do you know what room Longshot was staying in?”

Scott’s blood ran cold. “South side. Are you serious?”

“There’s so many of them, I don’t know how much longer the others -”

The dupe dispelled, and Jamie looked back at him apologetically. “Sorry, just talking to myself.”

They had never given Julio or Shatterstar a comm. Stupid, stupid.

“I’m seeing three or four that are looking much worse than the others, but Kitty and Kurt seem to be handling them just fine. Scott, I think - Scott? Scott!”

He was running down the hall before Jamie could finish, skidding around a corner and dodging Rahne mauling a guy. The hallway, the living-living room, the non-living-living room, the formal dining room, thick with dust, the foyer, the unnecessarily large foyer, and down the curling staircases in the far too grandiose open entry hall with the chandelier that Kurt had jumped onto so many times it was a small miracle it hadn’t broken yet. There was a thick screeching and wrenching sound as the metal shutters around every unnecessarily large window rattled, and loud thumps banged against the main doors. There were shutters there too, but Scott could begin to hear a grinding sound of them coming apart. It was a grinding sound Scott had heard once or twice before, echoing through his dreams and late night insomnia ever since.

The comm fizzed again, and Jamie’s voice came through. “A lot of them are congregating around the south side, Scott, better hurry! Also, I know this isn’t a good time, but I’d like to talk to you later about this bill of rights the other alternate Jamies and I have been working on -”

Scott cut out the comm. He bounced on the balls of his feet, watching the slightly shaking doors, glancing at the staircases, at the left one he came through and the right one that led to another staircase that led to the small room he had put Shatterstar up in. He glanced at the door, glanced at the staircase, and then decided that the doors would have to hold and sprinted towards the staircase.

He had made decisions like that a million times before. Sometimes they didn’t end well, or were made badly - but he couldn’t regret them. Then he just wouldn’t stop.

It was quieter up here, the screech of ice and fire almost hidden by the long length of corridors that Scott now ran through. He could only hear his own footsteps, steady and quick, and the recurring through running through his head. He didn’t want to see the expression on Longshot’s face if -

Shatterstar’s door was, of course, locked. Scott didn’t so much as knock as bang his fist against the door. “It’s Scott, open up!”

“Prove it!”

Scott ground his teeth. “Open up the damn door or you’re on dishes duty for the next month!”

The door flung open, two frightened teenagers standing next to each other. Julio said, “Yeah, that’s Scott. What’s going on? We’re hearing a lot of guys below our window. I’ve been trying to shake them off, but we’re three stories high and I can’t reach the ground from here.”

As Julio continued talking his voice got higher and more panicked, running his fingers through his hair and unsuccessfully trying to cover the fear in his eyes with confidence. Scott would have to remember to tell him that you couldn’t have one without the other.

Scott ran his fingers through his hair, then realized it made him look stressed out and forced himself to stop. “They know where you are. You two are coming with me, we’re finding the danger room-” No, the danger room was where he put Hisako and Ruth, that’s why he hadn’t put him there in the first place, “we’re finding the Cerebro chamber. It’s hidden, you’ll be safe.”

“You have to let me go out there,” Shatterstar said, “I’m a warrior, I’ve fought monsters like this thousands of times. If there’s one thing I can do it’s kill! I don’t know how to run away!”

“They’ll know where you are, they’ll all be after you!”

“I can handle them all!”

Julio was chewing his lip, still looking at Shatterstar. Shatterstar’s expression and tone hadn’t changed, a steady fury blazing in his eyes.

“Rule three, you two!” Scott barked. “You don’t argue with me in a fight! That gets you killed, do you understand? We are going, and you are going to stay in Cerebro because anything else would be a stupid thing to do!” He turned his back on them, gesturing impatiently. “Come on, we’re going.”

Scott had already descended the stairs before he realized that they hadn’t followed him.

He found Ellie standing in the unnecessarily grand foyer hands propped on her hips, looking something vaguely approximate to happy. A single claw had broken through the door and was ripping its way through the wood.

Scott skidded to a stop, placing a finger on his visor. Ellie, still in her nirvana t-shirt and ripped jeans, shook her head.

“Go. I got this.”

She crouched low to the ground, grinning widely. Scott suddenly remembered that she hung out with Deadpool regularly, and that he still had no idea what her powers actually were.

Shooting one last glance over his shoulder, another split-second decision he hoped was the right one, and chased after Julio and Shatterstar.

He knew the shortcuts that they didn’t, as well as far longer legs and being in incredible shape, so he got to the ground before they did. It was worse than it had been when he had left Jamie and the security cameras: the herd that began as a rip in space with bounty hunters pouring out, monsters of all shapes and sizes, had thinned but not dissipated. In the distance he saw Amara stomp her foot and, like she was hauling something from the sea, released a thick column of magma so hot Scott felt the heat wave wash against his face. There were thick  leftover sheets of ice coating the walls of the house melting under Amara’s heat, and the tops several trees looked scorched from Sam’s blasts. Scott knew objectively a good half of the team specializes in blowing things up, and it wasn’t like he hasn’t seen it in person dozens of times, but the carnage wrought from a small assembly of teenagers was worrying at the best. He really shouldn’t have been surprised. That was more or less how they selected who to extend the invitation to the X-Men to - mutants too powerful and uncontrollable to live a normal life.

Scott surveyed the damage. Whatever else you could call this, it was hardly a normal life.

The herd had thinned but was not gone. Almost everyone was still locked in their own battles, blowing up small parties of hunters only to have more take their place. Dani had faltered only to have Rahne jump in and cover her front, blocking the blow of a mace and snapping a hand off. Scott carefully picked out a straight shot and was just about to raise a hand to his visor when he heard a crash four stories above.

Then Shatterstar landed in the middle of the mob, crushing the skull of one of the hunter’s head to the ground, screaming bloody murder.

Of course. None of the goons, even if they had gotten inside the house, would have bothered to go above the third story. Scott knew full well the staircases got narrower and more rickety the higher up you went, and from the...fifth story that Shatterstar had jumped out of there would have been very few impediments in his path - no goons, no Scott.

He realized too late that there were two pairs of screams added to the fray: one from Shatterstar, hollering a war cry as he lifted a large barbell that he had found from somewhere and smashed it into a head, and another one also coming from the same window Shatterstar had jumped from.

This time the war cry came from above, a desperate and dragged out scream. “Fuck you!”

Scott looked up. It was Julio. This would have been less of a problem if Scott hadn’t known that, unlike possibly Shatterstar, Julio had no flying powers or body reinforcement powers whatsoever. Scott screamed, reaching uselessly, before Shatterstar dropped his barbell and jumped ten feet in the air to grab Julio by his waist and let them crash back onto the ground. The whole thing had taken less than a few seconds, and Shatterstar released Julio gently back onto the ground before promptly smashing the barbell into another skull.

“What are you doing here?” Scott screamed, finally ripping another laser in a parallel line to the boys through several bodies. “Get back in the house!”

Shatterstar was one of the greatest fighters Scott had ever seen. Not powerful like Magneto or capable of releasing great waves of energy like Jean or Rachel, but possessing all of the agility of Kurt with the strength of Hisako’s armor. Swinging the barbell like a bo staff, he smashed in three skulls in one swing and used the same motion to jump onto another’s head and caved in his eyes with the press of a heel. He never went for a gut shot or a push, but for the guaranteed and quick kill shot each time. Eyes or skull, pierced or caved in. Scott had never seen so many brains before. He rode the crowd, bouncing from every head and pulling a standing triple backflip to avoid the swing of a spear. Scott could barely focus on his own fight, too mesmerized by awe at his grace and speed and horrified from the instinctual part of thim that always wanted to drag any kid away from a fight. That gut response was what lead Scott to notice that he was covering Julio, never stepping too far away from a circle around the boy and darting for any enemy that got within a certain radius. Julio was barely visible in the crowd, marked only as the epicenter of what could charitably be called a massacre.

Scott muscled his way in through the crowd only to find Julio crouched close to the ground, fingers digging in through landscaped grass into the rich earth beneath. His eyes were shut, hair drenched to his face with sweat, and he was taking deep breaths with exertion. Shatterstar only looked patient, cracking pressing bodies so they never touched the other boy. What Scott had taken for protection was him covering his back, giving him space to align his breathing with the center of the earth.

Some level of Scott knew what was happening before it did. In an impressive display of acrobatics, Scott leapt up to grab at the rocky wall of the manor and swung himself onto a balcony on the second story. He fingered his comm, only taking the time to shout, “Off the ground, now!”

They had protocols. Bobby was forming several staircases to the roof before he had finished his sentence, Jean Paul and Sam scooping others up.

Julio was breathing heavily now, and Shatterstar leapt down to place one hand on his shoulder. A white star shone over one eye, making the eye film over with a milky white.

“Julio,” Scott called down. “What are you doing?”

“My name,” Julio said, voice starting to echo with an ethereal reverb, “is _Rictor!”_

The ground, to put it charitably, exploded.

The entire field caved in, a dozens of hunters screaming in pain as flying rocks pelted their faces and left large gashes. Not just the back yard that acted as the epicenter, the entire outdoor fields around the mansion where the mob had scattered caved in, the good hundred hunters sliding screaming into its depths. Julio - Rictor - alone couldn’t do this. Scott risked a glance back at the two boys, both screaming happily, and saw Shatterstar’s eye gleaming whiter as a subtle pulse emitted from his grip on Rictor.

Of course. Shatterstar had given them the short, overly vague summary of his powers only that morning. The power to create energy pulses, strengthening Rictor’s own ability to send devastating pulses of movement through the earth. The power must have been amplified three or four fold. Rictor was screaming, but Shatterstar was laughing with delight.

“Haha, fuck you! Fuck you all! It’s a good word, this fuck you! Mojo! What did you say, Rictor?”

“Tell Mojo,” Rictor gritted through clenched teeth, “to go fuck himself.”

“Yes!” Shatterstar said. “All of you, those who pass onto Hell! Tell Mojo to go fuck himself in Hell!”

He would have to get on their cases about the cursing later.

  
  
  


By the time that Cable and his small group emerged from a wormhole, holding five bloody severed heads and looking proud of themselves, the small military of teenagers were collapsed in the intact portions of the backyard, panting heavily and contenting themselves with staring at the sun or playing around in the ruined pool. Hisako and Ruth had emerged from the danger room to gape at the carnage, eliciting more than one muttered curse from Hisako as Ruth contentedly sucked on the ice pop Scott had given her. Shatterstar and Ellie were playing poker again. It seemed, judging from Shatterstar’s consternated expression, that Ellie was winning.

Cable stopped a few steps away from the withering wormhole, looking around in faint surprise. Domino next to him whistled, kicking over a clump of overturned dirt. “Looks like Longshot wasn’t kidding about the greatest army in the world.”

“Now that’s the Rictor and Shatterstar I know and love,” Rachel said proudly. Her red hair was sticky with blood, although it didn’t change the color much. Erik stepped out from behind her, cape singed and still on fire in some places. Logan used the small fires to light a cigarette and chuckled at the sight. Storm, looking perfect as usual, resignedly made a few rain clouds to put out Amara’s small leftover fires and drench the teenagers, now shrieking with laughter.

Scott turned to Cable, arching an eyebrow. “What was that about not needing to worry about a small army of bounty hunters on my doorstep?”

Cable looked at the severed head he was holding, then at Scott, and then back at the severed head. He held it up, displaying the gaping maw of more than a hundred filed teeth and the sickly yellow skin. “These are the bounty hunters. I think Mojo’s army of boom microphone operators are the ones that found you, although I don’t know how.” He looked contemplative, poking one of the short, squat yellow corpses with a Shatterstar signature caved in skull. “I was wondering why we didn’t have waves of torrential demon hoards after us. Thanks for that.”

“No problem.”

Longshot called out to Shatterstar, and when he looked up from his cards and his whispered conversation with Julio his eyes went wide. He jumped up and lunged the dozen yards between him and Longshot in barely a second, crashing into his father in a tight hug.

They both laughed, and if the laughter hid tears nobody knew. Ruth pressed in closer to Scott’s leg, and he took her little hand in his.

They had a short conversation too quiet for anyone else to catch and eventually made their way back to Scott and Cable, Longshot fussing over Shatterstar for injuries with the teenager slapping his hands away.

“You should have seen him, it was incredible,” Shatterstar continued excitedly as they came within hearing distance. “He made all of this complete mess, absolutely killed dozens of the boom operators in one blow. He was incredible, an amazing warrior, never even fought before!”

Rachel snorted. “And so it begins.”

Scott pointedly didn’t know what she was talking about. Cable held one hand up against his face in an attempt to hide his smile.

Longshot clasped Scott’s hand, smile looking a little more natural. He was probably a heartbreaker, Scott thought wryly, and now that he presumably didn’t have to worry about a dimensional despot he would be even worse. “Cyclops, thank you for looking after the kids. I know that we gave you a lot of trouble but your team more than rose to the challenge.”

“It was no issue,” Scott said dryly. “How did the fight with Mojo go?”

The group exchanged uneasy glances, then simultaneously turned back to Storm. She looked as serene as usual, with not one hair out of place.

“Do you know what happens to a dictator when it’s struck by lightning?” Storm asked.

Scott felt uneasy. “...do I even want to know?”

She smiled. It was horrible. “Same thing that happens to everything else.”

Longshot pulled Shatterstar closer to him, fighting off the sudden chill in the air.

“Can we go home?” Ellie asked,  having walked up from the new abandoned poker game. She was eyeing Storm appreciatively. Worryingly enough, so was Ruth. Well, as much as she could anyway. “I’m going to miss Supernatural.”

Domino brushed some soot off the dark mark over her eye, exchanging glances with Cable and Longshot. Finally, she said, “Let me go ahead and take you home. Cable and the others still have some boring shit to work out.” She turned to the remaining three X-Men. “Logan, Erik, it was nice meeting you under circumstances of you not trying to kill me. Storm, it was...something.”

They left in due time, Ellie exchanging phone numbers with Amara after whispering something in her ear that made Amara blush and giggle furiously. This deeply concerned Scott, but it was probably low down on the list of priorities for the moment. By the time he had turned back to the group Logan and Erik had already waved themselves off, saying something about their deep and abiding necessity for beer and a shower. Longshot and Shatterstar, worryingly enough, looked as if they didn’t understand either of those words.

“Where are you two going to go?” Scott asked. “Back to Mojoworld?”

The two looked at each other, then Longshot shrugged. “No thanks.”

“We kind of hate it,” Shatterstar said blandly.

“Not that much fun, yeah.”

Cable and Rachel looked at each other and snickered, while Scott was mostly confused. “Wait, didn’t you just liberate your entire dimension so you can live as free men or something?”

“Yes,” Longshot said patiently, “we wanted all people in Mojoworld to live a liberated, infomercial free life. But Shatterstar and I can never be free men there. We have no life to get back to, no new paths to discover. When you are made for one thing and one thing only the concept of a thousand new possibilities terrifies you a little. Not that I’ve ever felt terror, of course, but the approximation. I would like a new start. What I like, is…” he paused, groping for more words. He looked at Cable and Shatterstar, then tilted his head slightly to see a sky still tinged with ash. “It is that sky, with its pretty color. Those card games are nice too. Cable, Domino, and that little Negasonic Teenage Warhead are very fun too. I can take or leave Deadpool. Cable told me his Heroes for Hire -”

“That’s Luke Cage, Longshot.”

“Mercenaries for hire could always use a few good men. Of course, he said the same thing about the X-Men, if you’ll take me.” He grinned again. “And if you’ll take Shatterstar. We owe you very much, Cyclops. It is nice to help others a little.”

Scott turned to Shatterstar, who had followed his father’s gaze to the ashy sky. “What about you? Are you going with your father?”

Shatterstar bit his lip, glancing over his shoulder to where Julio stood with his hands jammed into his back pockets, head thrown back and laughing at something Jamie had said. He turned back to look at his father, who smiled again and nodded.

“I would like,” he said, almost tripping over the word, “to stay here. If you want, of course.”

“You don’t want to be with your family?”

The teenager shrugged. “I am almost an adult, yeah? Everyone has to grow up sometime, leave their homes. It is nice to have that...that choice, yes, to leave. Longshot will still be here if I need him.” He glanced over his shoulder again. “And some things are worth staying for, yes?”

Shatterstar was a roughly gathered assembly of unimaginable power, of empty eyes and a gaunt face, a small barrage of ‘fuck you’s. Scott remembered his first screams of joy standing in the middle of waves of enemies, proclaiming his ultimate freedom.

Scott risked a quick glance at Ruth, who nodded minutely. Good.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Scott drawled, scratching his chin. “I don’t think you’d really fit in among the X-Men.”

The small assembly save Ruth poorly tried to hide their crushed expressions.

“And I can’t really see you in the New Mutants either,” Scott continued. “Or the X-Force.”

He grinned, well aware that they were hanging on his every word. He mentally flipped through that folder of names, of files and birth certificates, serious looking portraits lifted from their school IDs. “But then again, that’s probably a good thing. I’ve been thinking of a new team, a different hopeless assembly of schoolchildren. If that’s the kind of thing you’re interested in, you’ll be the second member. Julio’s the first, obviously.”

Dawning joy lit up in Shatterstar. “That sounds very good. Thank you.”

Rachel and Cable were glancing at each other, exchanging a complex arrangement of eyebrows and small head jerks in their secret unfathomable language. Finally Cable stamped on Rachel’s foot, causing her to blurt, “I like X-Factor!”

They turned around to look at her. Cable groaned. Rachel stamped on Cable’s foot, noticeably harder than when he had done it, and continued, “X-Factor sounds like such a good, strong name. Very...uh, masculine. It just rolls of the tongue. And it has an X in it, so the theme naming part’s down.”

Ruth tugged on Scott’s shirt and released the ice pop from her mouth. Her teeth were stained blue. “X-Factor, please.”

Scott gave up. “I guess this majestic team of two people is called X-Factor, for whatever freaking reason.”

He pretended not to notice Rachel and Cable high-fiving and turned back to Shatterstar. “Welcome to X-Factor then, Shatterstar. It’ll be great to have you.”

Shatterstar looked shifty, then coughed into his fist. “About that. I realize I asked you to call me Shatterstar, and I told the others this. Cable told me a nice story about you, Scott.”

Scott glanced at Cable, who shrugged. “I asked you to call me Nathan. Cable felt like a war name, unsuitable for a world that never seems to have seen war.” Which was debatable, but considering Cable’s standards it probably wasn’t.

“Yes!” Shatterstar snapped his fingers. “Gladiator name for a gladiator slave. That is who I am. I have not changed overnight.” He softened, looking almost fond as Longshot placed a hand on his shoulder. “There are no gladiators on Earth, or with the X-Men. And I don’t really like doing that anymore. Rictor said…” he turned away, suddenly bright red and coughing. “Rictor said that he liked Gaven. We agreed Gaveedra sounds strange on Earth, but he thought Gaven is nice. And I liked Rictor for his battle name - his last name is Richter! Very nice.”

Hours later, as Scott was tucking Ruth into bed with the faint sounds of Julio shifting the earth back into a slightly disrupted position instead of its extremely overturned one, he helped Ruth take off her blindfold and fold it neatly on her nightstand. Her empty sockets turned to Scott, smiling even as she yawned.

“Exciting day, huh?” He pulled the covers tighter.

“The most.” She rolled over to grab a stuffed animal and stuck it next to her.

Scott paused, listening to Julio fix the earth below them and watching Ruth stroke her stuffed axolotl. “Hey, Ruth. You know I don’t like it when the others date in-house and everything, right? It gets pretty awkward when they break up.”

She snuggled deeper under the covers. “Hypocrite.”

“Yeah, I know. So do I need to be...worried about this?”

Without bothering to look up, she said, “Nope.”

“Oh.” Scott stood up, patting her on the head once and making his way to the door. He didn’t bother turning off the light - it had never been on. “Good night, Ruth.”

She didn’t bother responding.

A negative from Ruth could either mean two things: that they weren’t going to date at all or that they weren’t going to break up.

“Damn,” Scott said to the empty hallway. “Not again.”

He made his way downstairs, dodging bloodstains and turning off the lights as he went.

 

 


	5. Four Years After

When Scott got home that day he entered his room, took off his shoes, went to sleep, and did not leave the room again for the next two weeks. He only left because Magneto had showed up at the door asking to be let inside, and when he opened the door he had the full intention of going back to his room if there was any situation less than a Magneto-lead siege on the mansion. 

Scott opened the door a crack, glaring intensely in the hope that it would make Magneto go away. Of course, having Logan spear him with all six claws usually didn’t deter Magneto from whatever it was that he wanted to do but he thought that the gesture was the important thing, and set a precedent for the rest of the conversation.  Scott was very good at glaring, despite or because of the glasses. They could accurately convey the very miniscule amount of fucks of which he was willing to bestow upon Magneto, much less himself. They said: I could kill you by sneezing too hard and it’s allergy season. If I actually cared about you I’d stare in the general arm or leg area to spare your life should there be a large amount of dust. People picked up on that in the glint of the ruby quartz in the sun. 

“You look like shit,” Magneto said. 

Scott closed the door. 

Magneto knocked again. 

Maybe he’d just go away. 

Another knock. 

Of course, Scott thought the same thing when he saw him terrorize that one Senate session and look how well that went. He hadn’t gone away at all. 

Scott opened the door. 

“If you aren’t here to kill us go away,” he said. 

When he tried to close the door this time, Magneto stuck his foot in it. Maybe he had a vacuum to sell them. They could always use more vacuums, actually. 

“You need to get over yourself,” Magneto said. Scott was scandalized: Magneto had never once gotten over himself in his entire life. “Xavier’s still gone, isn’t he?”

He was, but admitting out loud felt a lot like pointing out that someone had mugged you, stabbed you in the leg, and stole your wallet. Especially the wallet: Scott was no idea how to manage finances and it was extremely overwhelming, so he hadn’t really bothered yet. Actually, he hadn’t tried at all. He had opened up the ledger, looked at it, and then decided he was too tired for this. 

Unfortunately, Magneto had picked up on this through Scott’s resentful glare. It was informative and told many tales. Knowing he wasn’t welcome but not caring, something he had great practice at, he continued, “Thank god. Anyway, I’m moving in.”

Before Scott could come to the conclusion that he had finally started hallucinating from lack of food, the metal hinges on the door slammed it open. Scott, who with his long experience dealing with Magneto learned to keep an eye on every piece of metal in the vicinity, had seen them quiver and jumped back just in time to avoid getting hit in the face. He dived to the side, hand reaching for his glasses as Magneto strode in like an avenging god. He was carrying a suitcase, and the sight of it was what let Scott process what he had said in the first place. 

It was a very large suitcase, and he knew how the man lived. He never stayed in one place for long. Xavier had once mentioned, as the man knew strange little facts about Magneto, that he set up a long term residence with all of his real belongings at an unknown location somewhere in the Rocky mountains that could only be accessed by moving a giant metal tin sheet, probably. He didn’t live there, apparently preferring jumping from safehouse to safehouse with his day to day possessions. Which could, hypothetically, fit in a large suitcase. 

It’s possible he wasn’t joking. “Are you joking?” 

“Katherine told me you haven’t left your bedroom in two weeks. Apparently the house is descending into unorganized, depressed chaos. I’m not impressed, Scott.”

He had to wonder for a couple seconds who Katherine was, before remembering that it was Kitty’s birth name. That memory was quickly followed by another one, such as the fact that she frequently spent Hannukah with him and Ben Grimm. Since Magneto was not actually all that evil anymore he had let it slide. He couldn’t believe she had tattled on him. 

“I don’t care,” Scott said. 

“Tragically, I believe that,” Magneto sneered. “Too wrapped up in your own self-pity?”

“She’s dead,” Scott said. 

He had to practice saying that word in front of the mirror. Dead, dead, dead. He couldn’t go on bursting into tears every time he had to say it. It was just a word. Crying all the time was beginning to get annoying. It had taken him a few months for him to admit out loud his parents were dead last time, which was pretty pathetic. Grieving was like riding a bike. 

Seeing him without the helmet was a little strange. He didn’t look younger or older, but being able to actually see his facial expressions made it different. He could see his facial expressions now, a faint softening in his eyes and mouth. 

“Which is why I’m here,” he said. “Charles is gone. You’re inept. Katherine cannot lead a superhero team worth a damn. Ergo, myself. Where are the bedrooms? I want a larger one.”

“They’re all large.” Again, it took him a second. “Wait, you aren’t moving in here.”

He had been kind of hiding behind the door this entire conversation, but now was the time for heroic determination and the ability to confront. He moved to stand in front of Magneto. He didn’t feel very different, or very confrontational. He was a good two inches shorter than the man. 

“If you can muster up the energy to stop me then I’ll leave.”

A beat, then two, then several seconds. Magneto muscled past Scott and, waving a single hand at his suitcase to make it float behind him like a particularly eager and well balanced dog, climbed up the unnecessarily big stairs and climbed the left staircase. 

“That’s the one to the kitchens,” Scott called. “You want the one to the right.”

Magneto waved a hand in acknowledgement, causing the suitcase to wobble happily, and moved to the right. 

A month ago Scott would have probably been more concerned about this, but even if he wasn’t a month ago Jean could have taken care of it. Now that she was gone and he was pathetically vulnerable, stripped raw with his weakness so weeping and tender he had to lock himself in his room so nobody could see it. It was like an open sore, making it hard to move. 

Maybe this was what life was going to be like now. Mystique deciding she was actually going to be a mother to Rogue and Kurt and start cooking french toast in their kitchen. The Brotherhood of Douchebag Mutants playing football in the backyard, probably with the Blob always winning. Apocalypse finally wiping them off the fucking map. 

Well, he was out of bed anyway, and he hadn’t eaten since he had dragged himself into the kitchen at midnight two days ago and ate a sleeve of saltines. He moved to the kitchen, aware he was still in his pajamas. His favorite shirt and jeans still smelled like saltwater and they sat in a corner of his closet, stinking everything up so his closet was saltwater. 

Everyone in the house was in the kitchen, clustered around a clunky laptop playing the security camera footage from the foyer. They realized too late that Scott had migrated from the foyer and into the kitchen, realizing his trajectory the second before he walked in so every head clustered around the small circular table shot up and swiveled towards him. 

There was a lot of sarcastic and pointed things to say about spying on other people, but he wanted juice more. There was some juice in the fridge so he grabbed a cup and drank it. He was intending on going back to his room before Kitty jumped up and intercepted him. 

“Scott! I swear, I didn’t mean to invite Erik over, he didn’t mention this to me at all, I really promise. Genuinely I did not think he was going to show up at, like, our house. I can tell him to leave, he might listen to me. Or might not, I don’t know. Scott?” 

“I don’t actually care,” Scott said, fully aware that this was the full extent of communication he has had with the team for the last two weeks. 

He went back to his room and slept some more. It was restless, snapping awake every twenty minutes as he realized there was no breathing beside him. He woke up at ten, having gone to sleep at three pm yesterday. He went on his computer for a little while then went back to sleep. 

Unfortunately, it was probably a good idea to check on Magneto - Erik, apparently - to make sure he wasn’t burning the house down. He had probably gotten bored of being somewhere while not actively terrorizing it and had left by now. The others may have kicked him out but if there was an actual fight Scott would have probably woken up for that. Probably. 

Feeling frisky, he pulled on actual clothing and shuffled downstairs. Everything was too bright and for the first time in a while he hated his glasses. He wanted to be able to see, goddamnit. He had to tape his eyes shut to cry. It was pathetic, and it was pathetic how he was so pathetically grateful just not to have bandages over his eyes for the rest of his life. Nobody else’s mutation was like this. Of course, nobody else had ever gotten a traumatic brain injury through falling 10,000 feet and hitting the ground in a not-perfect way. And having their parents die. 

There was probably somebody in the living-living room, so he checked there. There was a lot of somebodies, actually: apparently the team travelled in herds these days so they were all there, plus an extra very tall body sitting on the couch talking quietly with Amara. Kurt and Kitty were on the computer, quietly working with files that Scott recognized distantly were X-Men buisness. Ray and Sam were playing Mario Kart with the sound off, sitting cross legged quietly and playing somewhat mechanically. Bobby was watching them, half falling asleep. Roberto was asleep. Tabby was reading a book, which was strange considering Scott wasn’t entirely sure Tabby knew how to read. Rahne, Jubilee- reading books, listening to music and sitting in an armchair not moving. Jamie was nowhere to be found. 

Scott stopped in the doorway, their pain penetrating his. When you loved someone they moved in orbit to you, an eye half on them at all times. You lived in relation to each other. He took too much responsibility, felt like their tears was his fault. Tabby had always created her own problems. Jamie just cried at everything, really. It had been six years, seven with some of them. He was so used to them. 

Then the feeling went away as sudden as it came, and suddenly the young adults were young adults again, some in senior years of high school and some transitioning to college. There would be children in the house again soon, as Scott and Jean were already assembling the new list for the next batch. There was a lot of potential in all of them, and starting out together would reinforce the bonds and decrease isolation and homesickness. They would have to wait for now. 

In an eerie mimic of the last time he had walked in on them, each head snapped up to stare at him in unison. They stood for a second just staring at each other, and then Amara, who once arm wrestled Sam into submission, burst into tears. Magneto - Erik? - rubbed his hand in a soothing pattern on her back and whispered something to her again, before he got up and gestured to Scott, walking past him in the doorway. 

Walking past the kitchen this time and taking a sharp right into the we-aren’t-entirely-sure-what-this-room-does-but-there’s-a-treadmill room, Scott and Magneto stood looking at each other again. Not even glaring, just kind of looking. 

Eventually, Scott had to ask, “Why are you still here?”

“My suitcase is unpacked and it’d be a pain to pack it up again,” Magneto said blandly. “And you have a very large pantry, which is nice.”

“Magneto, you’re an international criminal. If you stick around a SWAT team is going to bust down our doors any second. You’re being ridiculous.”

“My name is Erik, and you’re free to use it. I don’t actually go by Magneto anymore.”

Scott rubbed at his temples trying to combat the horrible headache he was developing. The room wasn’t even that brightly lit this time, it was just this asshole. “Can you please answer my question?”

“I just did.” Erik shrugged. “Nick Fury cleared me of all charges. Took me off the wanted list, gave me a pardon, pardoned me from all lawsuits, the works. According to the law, I’ve never had so much as a speeding ticket my whole life.”

Scott was dumbstruck. He had never really thought about what happened when a supervillain went good, just vaguely considering that it meant that they weren’t doing evil stuff anymore. It hadn’t really happened that often, so there wasn’t a real need to think about it. “You can’t be serious. Nick Fury barely even lets us operate, let alone you. What, you wanted your superhero ID badge and he just gave it to you? You should be in fucking jail, and you’re living in our house? Hanging out with my fucking kids? What are you trying to pull here?” He only realized by the end that he had almost started yelling, and had a brief spike of paranoia that the kids had heard. If they were still watching the security cams they definitely did. He turned to check the corners - cameras tucked away facing the wall by the Master of Magnetism, of course. 

“I promise I’m not trying to pull anything.” Erik started fiddling with the edge of his corduroy suit jacket uncomfortably. It was well tailored. “Scott, I honestly have no ulterior motive. I owe it to you and Charles to do this. It’s alright to not be able to handle things sometimes. I just wanted to give you the space to do that, and not have to be the leader of the X-Men right now.”

“What happened to ‘drowning in self-pity?’,” Scott sneered, “I thought I had to buck up and deal with it.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. You absolutely have to deal with this.” Erik paused and looked up at the ceiling a little, grappling for the words. “The X-Men do not need you. The team, not the children. This house falls apart without you, Scott, and you are not the only one grieving right now. They need to see you strong, they cannot be strong without it. Everyone in that room wants their mom and dad right now, and you’re all they have. I can’t do that for them.”

“Jamie doesn’t,” Scott said woodenly. He didn’t know why he was thinking of Jamie right now. He just was just a little kid. “The others think I’m just their bossy older brother, but Jamie hasn’t had anyone to take care of him since he was eight. Literally lived on a farm trying to feed himself for four years, only ever talking to his dupes. I really am like a father to him.” He rubbed his temples again, suddenly so tired. “I can’t do that right now.”

“He doesn’t need a father,” Erik said gently, “he needs you.”

Pep talks from Magneto. What was his life. 

Scott was already tired of this. All the kids were in the living room, and everyone was busy being sad. Scott was busy being sad too. “This isn’t fair.”

It was a word he hadn’t used since that phone call with Logan all those years ago, but it was an identical sentiment. He wanted someone else to be the strong one for once. He wanted to mope around and cry, and he couldn’t even do that because the only man he had trusted with his future had left for reasons Scott didn’t understand. The Professor was gone and Scott had been left in charge. No seventeen year old should have had to deal with that. He would have never made Amara and Bobby and Rahne deal with that. 

“I don’t know why he left,” Scott said. His voice cracked in the middle, and the long restrained tears started burning his eyes again. He could probably get away with scrubbing them but it’d be too obvious. 

Left unspoken, why did he leave me?

“He must have had a reason, Scott.” Erik looked distinctly uncomfortable at having to defend Xavier. “I know him. He would have wanted to stay.”

“My parents are still dead.” It became a cry at the end, a miniature shout of anger and fear, half breathed into his hands. 

“I know.” The last thing Scott fucking wanted was to cry in front of Magneto, or Erik, or whatever. He reached up and patted Scott awkwardly on the shoulder. His hands were strangely cold. He still looked serious - maybe he only ever looked serious - but his eyes were soft again. “The pain never goes away, it only sleeps.”

“And you would know?”

Erik sighed. “It has been eighty years for me, but the pain had been too much. I started doing what I thought they would have wanted, what I thought they and all the others who died deserved. Six years of pain became eighty. I have grown...tired of it.” He smiled crookedly. “I think I would like to retire. The pain only becomes dormant when I live for them instead of killing for them. I light too many candles on Yom HaSoah, but this year I told them and God that the candles would burn it away.” His eyes became far away, seeing only a far distant past. “I watched them burn to the ground, seeing every building and every inch of destruction and terror I have given in the flames. I saw the camps and those little babies thrown in...every child in every candle. Piles of shoes, of glasses and dolls, the gouges on the walls of the chamber they put me in that day. Eighty years was not enough.” He looked back at Scott, visibly struggling to draw his mind away from that place. “If you’ll have me I would stay. And I would like to be the strong one for once, instead of weak.”

Scott had no idea. It explained a lot. He felt sick, his gut churning with every inch of death he was feeling in his heart today. 

“Okay,” Scott said. “Okay.”

They gathered themselves for a second, Erik self-consciously straightening his jacket as Scott put his severe face back on.  

Scott slipped back into the living room with Erik on his tail, both of them fervently hoping that the conversation they had wasn’t evident on their faces. Maybe it no longer mattered: Scott felt himself when he looked at them again, when they were still in the same position they were in when they left. For the first time in a very, very long time Scott felt like he would never have to see another child cry because nobody cared about their pain, never have to put it away in a box hidden underneath a dirty foster home bed because somebody left the house for two weeks and asked them to take care of the baby. Scott felt there again. 

He clapped his hands, and once again the room’s attention snapped to him. He considered for the first time that they might be a little bored. “Okay, chuckleheads,” he said. “Get your shoes on. We’re going for ice cream.”

They started at him.

“Ice cream, really?” Erik asked from behind him. 

“I have never seen anybody turn down ice cream,” Scott said firmly, “even when it’s syrup poured on ice Bobby made. Bobby, turn off that video game, I’m talking to you.”

Bobby turned it off, eyes wide. Amara, pointedly not sniffling, was still staring at him. “Since when are you talking to us?”

“Yeah, I thought you were mad at us,” Sam said. He sounded as if he didn’t know if he should be sad about it or resentful, or if maybe he wanted to be both.

“Why on earth would I be mad at you?” Scott asked impatiently, propping his hands on his hips. He spotted Kurt moving for his image transducer. “Kurt, don’t bother, they’re going to know it’s us anyway.”

Kurt’s hand slowly retreated from the image transducer. 

“Considering the fact that you don’t care anymore,” Rogue said snidely, “They’ve been a little torn up about it.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m dead inside. But I want ice cream more than that.” He wasn’t even lying. He clapped his hands again. “If you make me ask again you’re all getting strawberry. Get moving!”

They got moving, scrambling off the couch and pouring into the foyer with only a few backwards glances thrown at Scott. Roberto, who was obsessed with ice cream due to the fact that he was always running at a hundred degrees, was smiling slightly. 

Scott looked around, running his automatic headcount. He turned to Kitty, who was overseeing the scramble with a practiced eye. “Hey, where’s Jamie?”

She shrugged, bags under her eyes a pale purple in the soft lamp lighting. “He’s taking it badly. I think he’s on the roof again.”

Jamie had graduated from his bedroom to the roof when he was upset as a teenager, possibly because the roof was more dramatic and he was under the impression it was more discreet. 

Sure enough, the locked door to the roof was swaying open slightly. There was no dupe sentry this time casually pretending to play Pokemon, no sounds of arguing with himself as Scott climbed the rickety stairs. He saw only Jamie, huddled in his usual spot against the railing but far away from the edge. He was sobbing. 

One of the things Scott had learned over the years was that every crying kid wanted somebody to help them. It was why sadness was physical sometimes, when you needed help. He accentuated his footsteps, scuffing his feet against the cement floor, and slowly lowered himself next to Jamie. His chest was wracking with it, almost screaming with pain. 

“Hey,” Scott said. “I’m back.”

He hadn’t stopped crying, but Scott hadn’t really expected him to. He draw a hand across his shoulder, letting Jamie lean into him as he cried against Scott’s shirt. He ran a hand through his hair, combing out the tangles and airblown strands. 

It took several minutes before Jamie stopped crying long enough to say anything. 

“Scott, she’s dead.”

He went back to crying. Scott stroked his hair again,

“It’ll be okay,” Scott said.

His breath wracked with sobs. “My parents are dead!”

“I know,” Scott said. “I know. It’s okay.”

Jamie had turned sixteen last week and it wasn’t fair.

“I know,” Scott said again, “I know.”


	6. Four Years Before

Who the hell was this chick?

Professor Xavier had ducked out a week ago, rolling himself onto the airplane and saying something about checking up on some kid in Germany. Scott had never been to Germany, or had met a German. Scott hoped that he wouldn’t be showing up anytime soon, as he had no interest in playing interpretive dance with someone who he couldn’t understand. Moreover, he would probably be the only one having difficulties in the house, considering the now two telepaths. Scott hadn’t even known there was such a thing as one telepath a few months ago. 

Jean Grey was a telepath, alright. She had apparently been too much for her suburb to handle, and after she had made half of her house float off the floor her parents had dropped her like a hot rock. They hadn’t said that, of course. They had acted very worried about her, had come and toured the house and interrogated an unflappable Xavier. But Scott knew how parents were, how they could be, and what that look in their eyes meant. They wouldn’t be coming to visit anytime soon. 

Not that she knew that. But then again, Scott thought sourly, there wasn’t a lot that Jean didn’t know. 

She wasn’t allowed to leave the house yet, barely able to stand the signal in the noise even from their remote manor. Xavier had said that things would calm down for her soon, and he was doing extensive therapy with her to that effect. Scott, whose attempts at control had been given up on long ago, was left free to wander the manor whistling to himself and experimentally thinking things for Jean to hear, rubbing his straining eyes. It annoyed him immensely how she read his mind with abandon, nevermind her intentions about it, so he made a point to annoy her too. 

_ Hey, look _ , Scott thought, staring hard at a tacky piece of modern art before sparks danced in his vision and he had to screw his eyes shut.  _ What do you think this piece is about? The folly of man?  _

Somehow he knew that she had heard him, but he caught a strange backlash from the ghostly imprint, like a splash from a disturbed pool. She was incredibly sad and lonely. 

He didn’t want to think about David huddled under his bed sobbing his little heart out, Scott stretching his arm until his shoulder ached to try and draw him out. Eventually he had settled for holding his hand, letting David huddle and cry as Scott sat on the floor with him holding his hand until the morning. 

She had seen that too. Dammit. 

Scott wandered through his favorite fourth floor hallways, double checking the corner rooms and stiff beds, rifling through ancient boxes filled with stuff. He had spent one sleepy Sunday afternoon rifling through five or six boxes shoved in a musty cabinet in one of the rooms, stuffed to the gills with incredible World War II paraphernalia. Nazi souvenirs, leftover army equipment and manuals, even someone’s dog tags. The mansion was filled with little odds and ends like that, every dusty corner eventually revealing itself to Scott as he meandered aimlessly through the hallways that swallowed his steps as he walked. He had been bored the last month.  As time wore on Scott was eventually chased from the attic rooms due to the heat, a sticky July threatening its way into fall. Xavier wanted him and Jean to start school at the same time, but if she kept on accidentally reading the minds of everyone in a thousand foot radius high school would be more hellish than usual. 

It wasn’t until his feet had guided him through the residential wing (wing!) that he heard the crying. It was high pitched and feminine, not desperate hysterics but a lingering sadness. A dainty sort of sorrow. Scott would have liked to turn and leave her alone, give her the privacy that he clearly lacked right now and let her pretend that she was fine and that she loved being here. Jean may have been able to read minds, but Scott could read people. Knowing someone’s thoughts was all well and good, but that didn’t always tell you why. 

The dark flashes behind his eyes hurt so much he was screwing his eyes open and shut again. He had misjudged the timing - normally he would be securely in his bed listening to the radio or a TV show, lights dimmed and ready to take a midday nap. Or he would have, if he hadn’t been distracted by Jean Grey. Scott sighed, and very carefully slipped his visor from his face and pulled on his blindfold, secured neatly with tight tape on each end and over each eyelid. That was that for today. Thanks for the sneak preview, vision. 

It was going to be a bitch and a half getting downstairs like this, the elevator so out of the way that he’d just get lost. It wasn’t worth it, but his attention stubbornly clung to the muffled sobs echoing from the door. There was no guiding visual cue but the sound awakened something instinctive in Scott. He couldn’t remember the last time he had stood by and let someone cry. 

Besides, it really would be a bitch and a half getting downstairs on his own. He wasn’t too proud to ask for help. 

He reached out a hand, remembering where he had oriented himself before he took off the visor and groping for the door. Eventually his fingers brushed soft wood instead of drywall, and he had begun reaching down for the cool metal doorknob before he thought better of it and settled for knocking. 

The sniffling abruptly broke off, and Scott wondered if she had known that he was walking past. He didn’t know if she was the kind of person to stop crying if somebody could hear them or to cry harder.

“Jean?” He knocked again. “Can I come in?”

A long hesitation. Finally, she called out, “Sure.”

Scott groped around for the doorknob again. He hadn’t really thought this one through, but it was too late to back out now. His hands slipped over the cold metal and he pushed it in, stepping into the room and attempting to overlay his mental map over his orientation. 

The bedsprings creaked as Jean bounced upwards from somewhere to his left. Bed to the far left corner in the rectangular room, desk in the middle of the wall in the right, bookshelf next to the bed and closet on the far right. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t - projecting, right?” She was clearly still combating tears, an extra level of stress layering her voice. “I’m really sorry if I am, I swear I didn’t mean to.” Her voice broke on the last word and she started sniffling again. 

“It’s alright,” Scott said. “Can you help me to a chair?”

“Oh, of course!” A rolling chair from the desk was pushed somewhere, and Jean brushed a feather light touch over the back of his hand. Scott very resolutely thought nothing at all. “Is it - your eyes, uh.” She was probably doing something like waving her hands over her eyes. “Are they alright?”

“No worse than usual,” Scott said wryly, grasping the back of the rolling chair and lowering himself into it. “Turns out a straight half inch of ruby quartz is hell on your eyes. I can really only wear them for a few hours a day.”

He was improving. Xavier said that he would probably be ready to start school in the fall if he took it easy. They were already making up little sunglasses. Scott didn’t know what they would do if he looked down too far to the ground. Blow up, apparently. 

“Oh. That - “

“Sucks?”

If she was a telepath then she would know just as well as he did. Scott thumped his hand against the dresser he was next to, recognizing himself as somewhere near the base of Jean’s bed. She was probably sitting on it, watching him unabashedly knowing that he couldn’t tell. Reading his mind unabashedly, because how could he tell!

“I guess we’re both in this boat,” Jean said sadly. “We must be the only two teenagers alive with uncontrollable WMDs for brains.”

Scott barked a laugh, surprising himself. “Great, we can be the National Association of Freaks, New York Chapter.”

“I call President. I wrote the fine charter of this great organization.” She adopted a mock-serious tone that called faint strains of Professor X to mind. “We the mutants, in order to form a more perfect hate group, establish inequality and ensure domestic terrorism, do so declare.”

Scott hummed the song to himself. “Provide for need for the common defence, promote the general terror and offense, and abandon the blessings of liberty.” He fingered the taped blindfold gingerly, remembering Jean’s involuntary captivity. “For ourselves, and our prosperity.”

Jean’s voice grew quieter, realizing the same thing he did. “To ordain and establish this constitution for..”

She trailed off uncertainly. “For what?” Scott asked.

“I don’t know.” She seemed just as disturbed by this admission as he was. “I barely even know what we are.”

“Mutants?” Scott leaned back in his chair. “That’s what Professor X said.”

“I barely even know what mutants are! Sure, everyone knows people just get random superpowers sometimes. But why does it happen?” Why does it happen to me? Scott didn’t know either. “I thought mutants were supposed to be...I thought their superpowers made them a little crazy sometimes. Like Dr. Doom.”

“Dr. Doom would be crazy with or without superpowers,” Scott added. “And aren’t we a little crazy?”

She didn’t answer. She probably didn’t like thinking about it.

“I just…maybe Professor Xavier got it wrong,” Jean said. She didn’t seem to believe herself, but grasped onto the straws as if she could build a boat with them. “Maybe this just happens sometimes, you know? Like...puberty? This has to happen to people sometimes.”

“It definitely happens to people sometimes,” Scott said dryly. Jean barreled on.

“I’m not saying he made a mistake or something, but maybe it’s more like a disease. I mean, I didn’t do anything wrong. I can’t even control this. If it was just me, I should be able to control it, right?” 

Right?

Scott’s eyes still hurt a little. He had given this conversation once or twice before. Of course, it was usually more like actual mental illness and unwanted pregnancies but the point still stood.

“Sometimes bad things happen to us that aren’t our fault. We just have to roll with those punches. You know, people get sick sometimes, right? And they have to go to the hospital or chemo or something. They can’t control that either.”

“Yeah,” Jean said, buoyed. “They can go to chemo. And once Professor Xavier helps me control it, put it in remission, then I can go home.”

It was a mean thing to do. It was callous and betrayed a lot more of the resentment he was trying to hide then he wanted. But maybe he was feeling a little resentful that day.

Scott laughed in her face. 

“This isn’t cancer,” he said, “this is AIDS.”

  
  


Scott managed to make it downstairs by himself, deciding that he would rather trip over floorboards than ask Jean for help. It was amazing how someone who could lift a bed three feet in the air by having a bad dream thought he was a freak. He wished the mansion was smaller, wished he didn’t feel so claustrophobic in this giant house. He held his hands out on the wall, tracing his steps on the molding, and felt for the turn that led him to the top of the ridiculous stairs in the ridiculously large foyer. He turned to the doors on the other side of the wall and felt for the tile into the kitchen, then took a left into the living room that he had ended up mostly messing around in. There was another living room nearby but it was a bit stuffy and had a fireplace instead of a TV. He would have called his one more of a den if he had ever had a den in his life. Plus they already had a den. It was downstairs. There was a pool table. 

He always left the remote in the same place, so he picked it up and listened to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for a while. He knew how Will Smith felt, and he didn’t think about anything but Will Smith until he went to bed that night.

The next morning he made a breakfast too large for himself before realizing that he was cooking for one person now instead of eight. He stared at the giant plate of eggs and the pot of oatmeal before giving up and thinking really loudly,  _ Jean! Breakfast’s ready! _

_ I’m coming!  _ The thought cut out abruptly.  _ Shit! _

_ It’s alright _ . Scott started putting out the plates, grabbing eight before hesitating and putting six back.  _ This is, like, consensual.  _

She was really embarrassed. This was alright. 

By the time she came down, hair still wet but makeup perfect, Scott had already started digging into his eggs. Jean practically ran to the table, eyes wide as the breakfast plates. 

“Scott, there’s so much food!”

Scott shrugged. Damn, was it hard judging stove temperature with these glasses on. Maybe he could heat up a barbecue pit by staring at it too hard. “My group home had eight kids and I was the oldest. The ‘parents’”, Scott was not a finger quote kind of guy but these people deserved the finger quote, “didn’t cook too much so it was kind of my job.” As well as the homework, getting them ready for bath, getting them to the bus stop, getting them to sleep at a decent hour, getting them to stop crying...

“Foster...care, right?” Jean winced. “Wow, that must have been awful.”

“It was alright.” Scott put sugar in his oatmeal. “The kids were fine.”

“But aren’t they all criminals and stuff?”

The anger was crushed very tight and put in a neat little box under his bed. Maybe Jean saw it anyway. “I don’t know, Jean,” he said, voice tight as a violin string, “it’s a little hard for an eight year old to be a criminal. It’s also hard for Mikey, who was twelve, to be that much of a criminal. He wants to go to law school. It was pretty hard for Mark, Jessica, Andy, Maria, Taylor, and Jasmine to be criminals, considering that they are all between twelve and six. Next time I see a six year old jack a car I’ll let you know.”

It was harsh, probably too harsh, but Scott didn’t regret it. It didn’t feel very good to see Jean wince, though. Strangely enough, she looked thoughtful instead of any of the million things she could be judging Scott for. She looked at her eggs and said, “Can I help with the breakfast dishes?”

They had usually done it together, boys one day and girls the next. He didn’t really like doing it by himself. “Sure.” 

They chatted a while after that before retreating back to the sub-basement basement and tried to practice controlling their powers. Jean really was getting better every day - she could manage to only listen to Scott’s thoughts instead of the landscaper on the opposite end of the property. She really might be ready to start school with him. 

It was embarrassing, but using his eye beams made him fall flat on his ass sometimes. Which was really, really inconvenient when you weren’t trying to destroy the ceiling. In good news for the part of the Scott that would really prefer not to die in a landslide, the now inactivated robot room had strangely excellent insulation. Jean even said it was one of the few places she had a hard time hearing others think. He had discreetly gotten a training schedule out of her so he could take care of private business while she was down here. 

By the end of it Jean was chatty again. She really had to be lonely if she was forgiving Scott being so snippy with her all the time. 

“So Janet was being a real bitch to Emily because Emily had made out with her boyfriend at one of her parties, right?”

“Uh huh.” They were playing a game where Jean stood very carefully behind Scott and hade metal balls dance in the air as Scott tried to destroy them. It was good practice in precision control for the both of them. 

“But Janet’s always kind of been like that, even though I don’t blame her about Emily. I mean, I know more than one person who pretended they were drunk to use it an excuse to kiss someone else’s boyfriend, you know?”

“Definitely.” Scott destroyed a metal ball, sending it spinning. The other three skittered farther away, weaving through the spinning laser. 

“I mean, not that I get involved in any of that stuff, but the drama’s fun. I never drink, I’m an honor’s student.”

“Reasonable.” Damn it, he missed. 

“Right? I have a GPA to keep up, and I’m part of the soccer team. I can’t spend all my time drinking. I mean, not that the soccer team doesn’t go out to drink, but I like to be the designated driver. Well, I have my permit, but some people there are eighteen, so it’s not illegal, right?”

“Right.”

She frowned, waving a hand to let the balls dance the ballet as they ducked Scott’s blasts. Scott picked one out from the herd and mercilessly shot it, a lion chasing down the sick buffalo. “Are you paying attention?”

“Yeah. Janet was being a bitch, right?”

“Well, I’ve never called anyone a bitch in my life. But Emily said she was, I’m just repeating that.”

“I’m sure.”

Who the hell was this chick?

A bell dinged and the balls fell to the floor, Jean stretching and Scott slipping his visor back on, exchanging red for more red. It took a couple seconds for the strange burning feeling in his eyes to dissipate. It was such a new sensation, he had a hard time describing it.

“It’s like wanting to cry, but you’re in public and you can’t, right?” Jean was making her way to the door, punching in a few codes so it would open. “The others would make fun of you. So your cheeks are really red and you face is hot, and you want to cry.” She paused a beat. “You didn’t say that out loud, did you.”

“No.” He fingered the ruby quartz self consciously. He needed to clean it, although he had no idea how he would do that. “How did you know how it feels?”

She shrugged. “I don’t really know how anything works anymore.”

He would like nothing more than to tell her that she wasn’t on the soccer team anymore. Janet, Emily, all their cheating boyfriends would never give her the time of day again, even if they were standing in front of her. They wouldn’t recognize her, same way her parents didn’t. He had seen it in enough kids, had heard endless tales of their lives back home. They missed them at first, but the memory was soon swapped for the reality of what their home lives were like in the first place. People didn’t want what was best, they wanted what was comfortable. 

He didn’t need to say it. Jean’s mouth thinned and she walked out of the room a little too briskly. Jean had heard it anyway. It didn’t matter - she already knew. 

He sat alone in his room with the lights off and taking his usual midday nap, letting his eyes rest from the strain. He would have to cut these out once he got to school - maybe during his lunch period? What a hassle. Maybe he would be better by then. 

Yeah, and maybe they would cure AIDS and all the sad gay people could go home and kiss their boyfriends or whatever. Yeah. 

Whatever Jean did during these periods, Scott didn’t know. He didn’t think Jean wandered and explored like he did. She really loved to read, he could tell that. Scott wasn’t much of a reader, so he didn’t recognize most of the titles, but they all looked like something out of a reading list. Maybe it was assigned summer reading for the school? How the hell had she gotten her hands on that? It was also possible she just liked reading weirdly complicated books. It must be nice being able to hang out with fictional people and not have to read their mind. He wondered if that was what it was like, some kind of internal narration - what was it called, third person limited? 

It was weird to think of that she might see his life that way. He imagined it - ‘Scott sat alone in his room with the lights off taking is usual midday nap. Jean was a strangely attractive white girl with world bending powers, but he liked her and her beautiful blond hair anyway.’ 

Wow, he really hoped she hadn’t heard that. 

By the time he woke up for good it was late afternoon and the faint shadows of dusk painted the corners of the mansion. He had laid in bed for an intermediate amount of time, falling asleep and waking again, until eventually he was just lying in bed thinking fuzzy thoughts and scratching at the taped blindfold. Not actually being able to open your eyes to wake up really made it easy to oversleep. He finally forced himself to reach over on the nightstand scrabbling for his visor. Most of the time he could grab it just fine, but sometimes he had accidentally knocked it over in the night and he had to grope around on his hands and knees looking for it. 

After a very tiring few seconds of waving his hand over his table he finally gave up and started looking around the room. By the end of his fruitless search he was seriously considering just going back to bed so he didn’t have to deal with this. Great. Just great. He had half started his really embarrassing mental call to Xavier asking him for help before he remembered Xavier wouldn’t be home for another week. 

Great. Was this going to be the rest of life? Could he ever open his eyes again? A sea of red forever crashing against his eyes, warping every color and face? He knew the train of thought was less than productive. Scott was at his core a very practical person, and he didn’t like to feel unnecessary things. 

He banished the self-pity and swallowed his pride. 

_ Jean?  _

He got a faint wave of confusion, the usual backlash from their strangely psychic connection.  _ Scott?  _

Maybe it was just his sleep deprived, extremely blind state, but he found himself grinning. Lose one sense and you appreciate the other.  _ You know, this is kind of cool. Testing one, testing two. _

She seemed freaked out. 

Okay, moving on.  _ This is embarrassing, but I think I dropped my visor somewhere. I could have sworn I took them off before bed, but they could be anywhere… _

_ Coming up.  _

Sure enough, a few minutes later she had knocked and entered the door. Scott was lying on his bed, scratching at the itchy blindfold and scowling. “This is embarrassing.”

“It’s no problem.” He had always imagined blind people having more audio cues to mark where and what people were doing, but honestly Jean could be doing literally anything right now and he wouldn’t know. It sounded a little like she was moving around. “Um, if you don’t me asking, are you like...”

“If you’re making polite hand gestures I can’t see them,” Scott said flatly. “And if you’re asking how my mutation works I have literally so little clue it’s a kind of worrying.”

“I mean, I just don’t see how the blindfold helps.” Some papers were being shuffled around, maybe, kind of. “I’ve never met a blind person before.”

Scott was tired. He wanted to go back to sleep again. “I guess you’ve never seen me with my eyes regularly open, huh?”

“Nope.” Maybe a few boxes this time. Scott didn’t really have a lot of stuff. Or really any stuff. “Why do you have so many photographs? Never mind. I mean, I heard that you had some kind of brain injury, and that’s why you can’t see sometimes?”

“That was a very long time ago.” Practically another lifetime. “We have no idea how the TBI affected this mutation, but we just think it probably did. I can see just fine, it’s just that I explode most of what I look at.”

“Oh, that sounds awful. I’m checking your bathroom, by the way.” A door swung shut, then opened again. “Found them! They were on the sink.”

Damn, so that’s where he left them. He could navigate his room really well with his eyes closed, and sometimes he just left his visor anywhere. “Thanks.”

He smelled her vaguely floral shampoo before he felt her hand grasp his, gently folding the visor into them. They lingered just a little bit too long, or Scott was hyperaware of every second they were on his skin. He wasn’t sure which. “But they can’t cure that, right?”

The visor was cool to the touch, not quite metal but not quite plastic. “Excuse me?”

“I mean, you got the mutation from the brain injury, right? And your, like, childhood and stuff. So that’s why you can’t control this.” She sounded hesitantly triumphant, and Scott busied himself with looking very carefully down at the ground and peeling the blindfold off. His hand shook as the bandages fell away and the visor was locked over his ears practically in the same second. He tugged at them slightly, easing them into his face, before taking a deep breath and opening his eyes.

Jean was looking at him, wide eyed and just as aware of the fact that he could have blown her head off if any little thing had gone wrong during that process. Nobody had ever been afraid of Scott until a few months ago. “This is what I mean!” Jean said, gesturing a shaky hand. “This is from an injury you had, it messed up your - what is it called, an X gene? Your X gene. But nothing’s happened to me.” Her hand was still shaking, and she has begun chewing at one of the perfect nails. “I’m fine. I had a - a perfectly nice life, Scott! This is an accident, all of this. I’m going to fix this, and I’m going to go home. Like, no offence, but this isn’t my brain anymore.” Her nail was practically worn down to the quick. “These voices are in my head, Scott. I’m hearing so many voices all the time, this can’t possibly be me. I’m never going to live a normal life if this keeps up. How am I going to go to  _ college _ ?”

Fuck you, Scott thought, as loudly as he could. Then he got up and walked out the door, because he had his stupid visor and and was allowed to see again. 

Like Scott didn’t want his old life back. Like Scott didn’t want to see all the kids again, didn’t want to make everybody their breakfasts and help Mikey with his homework again, because Mikey wanted really good grades and worked so hard. Maybe Jean was right: maybe he had only ever had a half-life, had spent all of it on other people and little kids and wishing he had parents again. Maybe if he had just joined the soccer team, Scott thought bitterly, he could have lived a life that was worth something. 

He stomped down into the kitchen and opened cabinets with more force than was strictly necessary. Maybe if he had joined the stupid soccer team - a cabinet door crashed back into the wall - and went to parties and drank a lot - he opened a fridge and gently grabbed an orange before slamming the fridge shut again - then he could control his stupid mutation that blew things up because his  _ parents were dead _ \- 

The phone set into the kitchen wall rang. Scott tore it away from the wall, not bothering to check the caller ID.

“What?” Scott barked. 

“Scott?” 

It was Mikey. 

Every line of tension in Scott’s body snapped, letting him slump him against the counter and returning a goofy smile to his face. Smile in front of the kids. “Kiddo! How’re you holding up?”

“I’m doing awesome but Andy is crying and being a total baby,” Mikey said frankly. He was a blunt kid but a bit of a liar. “I’m only calling because Andy and Jazzy have been whining for you all day. Like nobody else has any problems here? Ms. Yolanda gave like a thousand pages of homework again and I still don’t get any of it.”

He grinned, propping the phone on his shoulder as he started peeling his orange. “Are you still on the trig chapter?”

“I hate triangles! Why is math ruining shapes too?” He groaned theatrically into the speaker. “I’m dying, Scott, tell Mark that he owes me twelve dollars, put it in my  _ casket  _ because I’m going to be  _ dead _ .”

“Everyone knows Ms. Yolanda is quite a bitch,” Scott said mildly. “Get Jazzy to beat her up for you.”

“Jazzy’s seven!”

“She a biter.” Scott bit into a section, working it free of the membrane with one fingernail. He had no idea that all the food changing colors would affect his appetite, but it kind of did. “You said that both Andy and Jazzy missed me?”

“I missed you first!” He paused, his breath fuzzing the speaker. “I miss you way more. But they’re being babies. It’s like they don’t even know how this works. They keep on asking where you are! They’re so stupid.”

This was so stupid. He had been so stupid, he freaking deserted them. How many people had he deserted by now? The list was so long and Scott still didn’t understand why they all cried when he left. “Can you put them on?” Scott asked. “Do they want to talk to me?”

“They’re just going to ask you to come home again,” Mikey said. He paused for a long beat, struggling with something, before bursting out. “Don’t come home! You said that some rich guy has you in a boarding school now just because you can shoot laser beams?”

“I’m not showing you the laser beams, Mike.”

“You’re still a jerk! Just freaking...just go away.” 

“Aw, Mikey.” He set the orange down, cradling the headset against his ear. Out of his other ear he picked up on the faint footsteps of Jean down the stairs. He didn’t care. “You know that it just wasn’t safe for me to stay there, right?”

He mumbled an affirmation. 

“Right. I miss you guys too. You can call me whenever you want, you know that? You can keep on calling as often as you want. Even if it’s to help with stupid trig. If Jazzy says she misses me just put her on the phone, I’ll always have time.”

“She’s just going to ask when you’re coming home,” Mikey said. 

Yes, just like everyone else had asked at one point or another over the past month. Little kids never got it. They were going to have abandonment issues at this point, christ. It was going to be his fault. “I’ll tell her it again, just like I tell her every time.”

They chatted for a little while after that, Mikey passing around the phone to everyone else and Scott fielding questions and complaints about each other. Taylor needed his cookie recipe and also him to demonstrate how to make it, at which point he suggested Mikey do it because Mikey needed to learn how to cook anyway. He had been trying to teach him before he woke up one day sobbing and screaming, feeling the heat cook under his eyeballs until it ruptured and took the ceiling with it. 

He had nightmares sometimes about the power awakening in the middle of the day instead of the night, at one of the kids coming in and shaking him awake for some water only to be blown into pieces by his own body. He had to leave. He just couldn’t explain to a crying Jasmine why. 

_ I want to try something _ . 

Great. Scott had barely fished a half-assed turkey sandwich out of the fridge and wanted to eat away a very stressful day. Look at all of this instead. 

_ Just come down to that dangerous robot room, okay? _

_ We really need a better name for that thing. _

_ Who names a room? _

Scott had the bad habit of doing so, but he stuffed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth instead and climbed down into the basement - not the basement-basement with the pool table and dusty boxes, but the secret-basement. By the time he had keyed open the elevator and found the control panel for the weird robot room he had noticed the fact that the room was already set up - not any particular danger level, but a lot of the targets that Scott normally used. 

_ Please? _

_ Whatever.  _

He didn’t really bother checking over the panel any further than that, trusting that Jean probably wasn’t going to try and kill him. Any level over 3 was locked by Xavier, thank god.

The room itself was pretty weird, basically a large metal box set into the wall and covered in panels and mechanical gadgets that resembled the weirdest Olympic gym ever. Xavier said it was for controlling Jean and Scott’s powers, which was a fair enough goal. The room itself seemed the ultimate reason any of them were there, the final reminder that this was not just a fancy mansion that pretended to be a boarding school. It wasn’t as if you could pretend to be normal outside of it, but in that box you were a mutant first and a teenager second. Scott didn’t know if he liked that. He didn’t know if he liked the fact that he was beginning to think of himself as a mutant first even out of the box, even walking around town and being called freak and time bomb. He’ll show them freak. He’ll show them time bomb. He’ll show them - what? What could he possibly show them? 

If he spent long enough in this room maybe he could figure it out. Scott really hoped that the answer wasn’t ‘training him to be Logan’, as he was scared of Logan and wasn’t sure if he wanted so much hair in weird parts of his body. 

Jean was waiting in the middle, poking at a target and clutching a bundle of something thick and blue to her chest. She whirled at the sound of the door, long blond hair flying in the wind and framing her wide eyes. “Scott!”

“That’s me,” he said wryly. “Anything else?”

She flushed, biting her lip and shifting from foot to foot. She eventually held out the package she was holding, letting it unfold into a jumpsuit with a large yellow triangle slashed over the torso. “This is, uh, that durable outfit Xavier got me. He knew my proportions, which was weird.” Scott privately agreed with her. “I didn’t really want to wear it, but I thought it might be fun? Do you want to...I mean, you don’t have to...”

He wasn’t a mind reader, but he didn’t need to be. “Let’s get changed,” he said, “although I don’t really get the need for costumes when we’re not trying to protect our identity.”

She shrugged, smiling helplessly. “Coolness? Team solidarity?”

“Definitely not coolness.”

The costume wasn’t as tricky to put on as you might think. Scott very, very privately - which probably meant that Jean was well aware of it - kind of liked it. It made him feel very cool and actiony. Not a ticking time bomb but a hero of the people. Scott Summers: Hero of the People. Realistically speaking, he had always kind of fancied himself like that. Scott Summers: Had a Poster of Joan of Arc in His Room As a Kid, Which Is Not A Very Masculine Thing To do. 

Jean took a little longer, but eventually they were both standing awkwardly in the middle of the metal room together, not quite making eye contact but not quite admitting that they weren’t making eye contact either. Scott patiently waited for her to explain what was going on, as this was her whole show.

She must have heard him, as she coughed. “I thought we could practice some more. I know I still need a lot of it, right? I thought it might be fun to practice with each other.” She smiled, wringing her hands. “I was thinking of some ideas, right? I could help you hit targets even when they’re behind you. And if I’m focusing really hard on lifting something, I can’t really watch my back. If we’re going to be working in a team, we should consolidate.”

It was an apology, and the second he recognized it he forgave her. She grinned wider, a hidden tension releasing from her shoulders. Huh. “That’s quite a tactical mind.” 

“I’m an honors student!” She caught herself, flushing again. “I mean, not that school has anything to do with how smart you are. I just really like school, and thinking about stuff like this. I have one last idea, if you’re up for it. Try moving to the other end of the room.”

They turned and aligned themselves at each far wall, adrenaline coursing through his system as his body knew that there would be some serious action going on before his mind did. But Jean hasn’t set up any of the targets, or programmed the bitchy little drones or floating Star Wars laser balls. There was nothing to fight, which was a weird thing to be confused about.

She grinned, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Okay, I have an idea. You’re going to have to hang in there with me.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath, shifting into something she probably thought was a battle stance. It looked more like she was trying to climb a small wall. “Flip off your visor and blast me.”

“No,” Scott said reflexively. Then he took a second to register what she was saying. “Are you crazy? I’d blow you to kingdom come, Jean!”

He thought several loud thoughts and cartoonish pictures of gross explosions, but she just shook her head and jutted her jaw out. “Remember what I said earlier. The reason you can’t control your mutation is because you hit your head as a kid, right?”

“That is what you said as you horribly insulted me, yes.”

She winced. “I’m so sorry. I’ll apologize for that after this, okay? For right now, you know that I can totally control minds.”

That was profoundly disturbing and he actually had no idea that she could do that. “Please tell me that you can control that power at least.”

Jean just looked shifty, so he reluctantly let it slide. Xavier really had some serious work to do with her, but it wasn’t like he was any better. Two teenage WMDs walk into a bar. The joke wasn’t really all that funny when it was their lives. “We need to work together. So if your brain can’t do something, my brain can do a whole lot. Maybe too much.” She quieted, talking to herself more than him. “It’s just so hard to believe that plain, normal old Jean Grey can do all of this crazy stuff. It’s kind of scary.”

Scott hummed, and Jean must have remembered that she had an audience. She shook herself, batting aside insecurities like flies. They must be alike that way. “So if I can have some influence on these things, then I should be able to help you control that. I can affect the part of your brain that says you can’t control this, and make you control it. I think I can do it if I just have eye contact.”

It really was an apology. He was both touched and incredulous. “You’re crazier than you look, Jean. You have no idea if you can actually do that or not. You’re betting your life on your ability to do crazy mind powers you’ve discovered two weeks ago.”

It was a little horrendous, how she just shrugged and smiled. There was so much self-confidence in that smile. That smile had seen the world bow at its feet, had seen opportunity open itself like a flower and give all that it had to her. She didn’t understand her power any better than Scott did. Maybe she could do anything so long as she didn’t understand failure. No limits. 

Scott was nothing but limits. Life had tripped him up at every opportunity, bit and kicked him and ground him down into nothing. He parceled away bits of himself and gave it away until he couldn’t find Scott anymore, only Scott’s unhappiness. Eventually he would have to start foisting that unhappiness on someone else. Maybe he had already dumped it on Jean’s lap.

“You know,” Scott said, “sometimes when there’s never been anything in your life that you couldn’t do it just means that you haven’t looked hard enough.”

“I’m looking now.” She hadn’t stopped grinning, the jerk. “You trust me.”

It wasn’t a question or assumption. She knew even when he didn’t. “With your life?”

She shrugged. “I always did. Ever since I met you.”

The strangest part was, so did he. 

He nodded to her, stiff and jerky, and lifted his hands to his visor. 

_ Get ready. _

She nodded, hands shaking almost imperceptibly.  _ You can do this, Scott. _

_ You aren’t giving me much choice. _

_ It’s how we grow.  _

He let her know he was going to do it, then reached up to his visor. His hands were shaking so hard they only brushed the lever a few times before they finally caught on the release and, before Scott could think better of it, he fired. 

When he first felt the heat burst from his eyes his thoughts exploded into a screamed no. His eyes were burning up, like trying not to cry when in a large group, but they burned no brighter than that. Incredible heat was wafting from his eyes and his skin felt like it was about to peel off but there was no slight recoil in his neck, no power coursing through his blood and spurting through his eyeballs. No crash and collapse of rock, no shrieking rend of metal, no earth shattering kaboom. 

He could see: no red, no quartz. It was his world half a year, a year ago, everyone else’s world. Five seconds of his real eyes. Jean’s costume was green, the walls were a slate gray, and her long, silky hair was - 

“Hey,” Scott said, “you're not blond!”

Jean screamed, a high pitched exhale of pain, and Scott slammed his eyes shut just in time for her to fall gasping to the floor. He flicked his visor back on, watching Jean sit shaking on the floor,  panting heavily and staring up at the ceiling. 

“Not dead,” she said, “not dead.” She breathed out shakily, but for some reason she was smirking.

“What,” Scott said, walking over and lending her a hand. “Don’t trust me?”

“I’ll be real, kind of thought I was going to die.”

“Hell of an apology.” Scott smiled, lifting her up and letting her dust off her costume. 

“Did it work?”

“I don’t know. Probably needed a few more laser beams and maybe one extra life-or-death situation.”

“I think I’ve run out of those for this week.” She paused. “Wait, what do you mean I’m not blonde?”

Scott shrugged. “Everything I see is really red tinted, right? So blue looks magenta, green looks kind of yellow, that sort of thing. I think brunette and black hair just turns into this really dark color. Really blonde hair gets red.”

“I’m a natural redhead!”

“How was I supposed to know that? Statistically, blonde’s better.”

She screamed into her hands, Scott laughing. “You’re incorrigible.”

“And you swallowed a dictionary. You interrupted me during dinner, you know. Do you want to try and kill each other a little more or can we go eat?”

“I don’t know,” Jean said, smiling up at him. “can we stop trying to kill each other?”

He seriously considered it. 

It was probably a bad idea to promise anything. You never knew how people were going to act tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day. They lived in the same house. They would fight. They would go to the same school and hang out with different people, and bicker over breakfast, and try and get higher grades than the other person, and judge their lifestyle choices. Scott would get jealous, Jean would get snobby. He could see it clear as day. 

“You know,” he said slowly, “I’m kind of looking forward to it.”

“The stupid thing is, I am too. I’ve never had an adrenaline rush before.” She and Scott began walking out of the room. “You know, we need a better name for this death trap.”

“I kind of like death trap.”

“That just sounds so bad, though.” She adopted a mock british accent that may or may not have sounded like Professor Xavier. “ ‘Naughty children get the Death Trap for breakfast.’ “

“Don’t be silly, we only practice the Death Trap in the evenings. The Danger Room is the breakfast obstacle course from hell.”

She was laughing, her teeth beautifully red. “So what’s the difference?”

“It’s all in the timing,” Scott said solemnly. “Time turns all things dangerous.”

“Sounds true.” She started ticking off on her fingers. “Old cars, for one.”

“Food, definitely.”

“Of course. Degenerative diseases.”

“More big words, but I think you can just say people in general.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Time does tend to kill people, yes.”

Scott hit his fist on his palm with the ‘ah-ha!’ gesture. “I’ve got an exception. Doesn’t time heal all wounds?”

“I thought it was wounds all heels.”

“Groucho Marx, really?”

He was laughing now too, both of them cackling through the well known power of the adrenaline release of two fifteen year olds unsuccessfully trying to kill each other. “I think we should go with Death Trap, for one.”

“What,” she teased, “no love for breakfast Danger Room?”

“I think Xavier’s making negotiations for the kidnapping of some German kid, we can ask him if he shows up.”

The climbed the stairs still laughing, Scott already planning out what to make for dinner.

  
  
  


Unfortunately, that German kid happened to be Kurt, so they were stuck with the Danger Room. 


End file.
